


Add it Up

by WeOnlyEattheUglyOnes



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Adventure & Romance, F/M, Humor, Mild Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:01:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 32,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25733284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeOnlyEattheUglyOnes/pseuds/WeOnlyEattheUglyOnes
Summary: Bruce Banner may have met his match in Ruby, a math genius with a severe dislike of cursing and a sunny disposition. Together, they face off against Hydra in a effort to root the evil organization out of her father's business. Along the way, they discover they have more in common than their brains.
Relationships: Bruce Banner/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

“Ow. Ow. OW! I changed my mind. STOP!”

Izzy playfully smacked her friend on the shoulder with the hairbrush. “Oh, shut up. You shouldn’t have this much freaking hair if you are such a tender-headed wussy baby.”

Ruby crossed her arms across her chest and put on her best pout. “I’m not tender-headed. You’re just going out of your way to make this as painful as possible. Were you a CIA interrogator in a past life?”

“I would’ve been done five minutes ago if you would be still,” she set the brush down on the counter and stepped back to inspect her handiwork. “There. You’re done.”

Ruby turned around to face the mirror. The woman that looked back at her could have just stepped out of a magazine. Her golden blonde hair was pulled back in a high chignon that hands down was the most sophisticated look she had ever worn. Paired with her vintage, art deco gown, the look was stunning.

“Izzy, you are a magician. Now if I can keep from tripping and falling on my face in these heels, this evening shouldn’t be a total disaster.”

“You say that about every event you father makes you attend. I swear, he does everything but put a collar around your neck and trot you around the room,” Izzy huffed as she smoothed out a wrinkle that Ruby hadn’t spotted.

“Oh, shush,” Ruby’s southern drawl drug out the word into two syllables. “I’m his only child. He needs me there for my support.” Which wasn’t the complete truth. Her father forced her to attend all these events to try to get her to take an interest in his business. Unfortunately for both of them, she had no head for business and was hopelessly inept at socializing. It made these events miserable for her and frustrating for her father. Tonight, though, was different. She was looking forward to it and could barely contain her excitement.

“Ok, I’m ready,” Ruby bounced in her shoes and clapped her hands together. “I’m so excited. I can’t believe I’m going to meet Dr. Banner. He’s…”

“Yeah, I know. You’ve already told me about a hundred times. He’s one of the most brilliant minds in the world. Blah, blah, blah.”

“I refuse to let you dampen my excitement.”

“Ok. But how about a tip? Don’t ask him about the weather. Or how he likes Houston. He’s probably been asked that about a dozen times already. Dazzle him with your brilliant mind, instead.”

“Ok, no weather or Houston questions. Got it.” Ruby hugged her friend and gave her a kiss on the cheek, leaving a light lipstick print behind.

“Have fun. And I’ll see you in a little while.”

Ruby practically danced out the door.

****

Dr. Bruce Banner stood off to the side of the room, half hidden behind a potted plant, and thought about all the places he would rather be than here. Sakaar came to mind, but he decided it wasn’t quite that bad, yet. Nick Fury wandered over to stand by him.

“You do know you’re hiding behind a plant,” Fury observed.

“Hum, is that what this is? I thought it was another mindless wife or daughter someone had introduced me to.”

Fury’s only answer was a slight snort.

“What am I doing here? You have other people that would have been better suited for this than me.”

“We needed someone with your brains here, and Parker’s in the middle of final exams.”

“Why? Everybody just wants to know what Stark was like, or Loki, or Thor. And I swear, if I get asked one more time how I like Houston, the Big Guy is going to make an appearance.”

“He might be better at mingling,” Fury snorted. “But we need to make a statement that the Avenger Initiative is still alive and well and that we are interested in more than just New York City. And there has been some disturbing Hydra activity in this area.”

Fury paused and smiled politely at a passing server before continuing, “look at Rhodes over there. He doesn’t want to be here either, but at least he’s trying. So quit sulking like a fucking two-year-old and get your green ass out there a start sucking up!”

With that, Fury stepped away from Bruce and strode up to two women. Giving them a big smile, he introduced himself and shook their hands enthusiastically.

Bruce looked down at the almost empty drink in his hand, “I’m going to need a lot more of these.”

Stepping out from his hiding place, he started across the room to the bar on the other side, only to be stopped before he got very far.

“Dr. Banner, I’m John Beaumont, the host of this little soiree,” a tall, dark haired man in a crisp tux held out his hand. “So glad you could make it.”

Bruce forced a smile, “thank you for the invitation.”

Beaumont looked at someone behind Bruce and smiled, “Ah, there she is. This is my daughter, Ruby. Ruby, this is Dr. Bruce Banner.”

Bruce turned to greet this Ruby Lee and had to look down. Way down. A stunningly beautiful woman stood beside him, looking up at him with eyes the color of a crystal-clear lake on a sunny day.

“Good evening, Dr. Banner,” she said in a silky southern drawl and held out her hand. His hand dwarfed it as they shook. It was cool to the touch and he could feel all the delicate bones in it. 

Beaumont droned on and it was a good thing because he couldn’t seem to form a coherent thought while looking into those eyes. She had to tug on her hand to get him to release it. Forcing himself to look away from her eyes, he looked down and instantly regretted it. Her breasts, barely contained by the bodice of her gown, made his mouth dry up instantly and he jerked his attention back to her lovely face, this time fixating on her plump, cupid bow lips that were tinted a glossy peach to match the color now rising in her cheeks.

“If you will excuse me, I see Senator Cononley.” Beaumont clasped Bruce on the shoulder, “enjoy your evening, Doctor.”

He barely acknowledged Beaumont’s departure. 

The silence stretched out uncomfortably long between the two until, Ruby cleared her throat and blurted out, “so how are you liking Houston?”

Instead of answering, Bruce swallowed the last of his drink, “I, uh, I’m just going to go get another one of these,” and hurried away, leaving her alone with a stunned look on her face. 

****

Ruby stomped into the room, quite an accomplishment in her heels, and slammed the door behind her.

“Oh, the nerve of that, that disgusting, chauvinistic, knuckle-dragging, over-rated buffoon!”

Izzy looked up from her phone where she sprawled across one of the beds in the hotel room.

“Wow, that’s harsh. Did some trust-fund brat hit on you?”

Ruby flopped down on the bed beside her, mindless of both her gown and hair.

“No, even worse,” she covered her face with both hands and wailed her frustration.

“An oil tycoon corner you for a little slap and tickle?”

“No,” she sighed. “The brilliant Dr. Banner couldn’t keep his eyes off my boobs, then dismissed me like I was inconsequential.”

“Wow,” Izzy rolled off the bed, opened the mini-refrigerator, and pulled out a picture of pale green liquid. “Did you talk about anything at all?”

“No. I’m an idiot. My mind froze and I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.”

“The weather or Houston?”

“Houston.” Ruby looked at her and sighed dramatically.

I don’t understand how someone so brilliant could be so socially awkward.”

"Right? You would think he would be more…, I don’t know, just more.”

Izzy laughed as she poured some of the contents of the picture into a plastic hotel cup and handed it to Ruby, who sat up long enough to take a drink.

“I was talking about you, dork!”

“You are a god among us mortals,” Ruby closed her eyes in satisfaction, the drank the rest of the margarita in a few long swallows and handed the cup back. “More, please. Lots more.”

“Of course, I am. Anyway, look on the bright side: you won’t have to see him ever again.”

“Thank goodness for that at least.”


	2. Chapter 2

Bruce rubbed his eyes and struggled to pay attention to their guide. He had only himself to blame for his current situation. After he fled from Beaumont’s daughter - he couldn’t even think her name without picturing what her luscious breasts would look like with his hands on them or how her pink mouth would taste if he kissed her - , he had drank too much liquor too quickly, which loosened up his tongue a bit too much. In a conversation, someone had mentioned the local science and technology think tank and he had expressed too much interest in the subject.

True, the Rita Beaumont Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology was on the cutting edge of modern research in space exploration and communications, but as another post-grad gushed over Stark’s legacy to the scientific community, he would rather be somewhere, anywhere, else. It didn’t help that he hadn’t slept well last night. Every time he closed his eyes, all he could see were clear blue eyes. Ruby Lee had haunted even his dreams and he had woken up with a raging hard on this morning. Trying to take care of the problem in the shower had been futile until he gave up and pictured her on her knees in front of him. That had done the job, but now he couldn’t shake that image and his boner kept threatening to make a reappearance.

Stark would love this shit. If he were still here.

“Fuck,” he muttered. It was going to be a long morning.

“Excuse me, Dr. Banner?” asked the dapper young man acting as their tour guide.

“Um, is there a bathroom nearby?”

The young man, David Bartlett, he thought, smiled at him like he was a small child, “of course. Let me show you.”

“No, that’s alright, just tell me where and I will find it,” he replied quickly. The last thing he wanted was this guy walking him to the bathroom. “You guys continue without me. I’ll catch up with you.”

The looks Fury and Rhodes shot him would have wounded a normal human. Luckily, Bruce wasn’t normal. Getting the directions, he hurried away from the small group. Finding the bathroom was simple, it was only around the corner, and he completed his business all too soon. Loath to hide out in the bathroom, Banner turned the opposite direction upon exiting and headed away from the tour.

****

Ruby turned from the equation she was working on when she heard the door behind her open and close.

“It’s about time,” she snapped at her visitor.

“Easy, Killer,” Izzy held out a large paper cup, “I come bearing coffee.”

“Oh, yes,” Ruby dropped the stylus in the tray and grabbed the cup.

Izzy wrinkled her nose as Ruby sipped her drink. “I don’t know how you can drink that. It’s almost all cream, sugar, and caramel. There’s so little coffee, it can’t even be legally called coffee.”

“Oh, shush,” she said leaning back on her desk and closing her eyes. “I don’t give you grief over that sludge you drink.”

“Of course not, it’s 300% coffee. This one cup is enough caffeine to make a small platoon of big men jittery for a week.”

Both women took a moment to savor their morning brews in companionable silence.

Izzy broke the silence first, “was your father mad at you from bailing early last night?”

“Mad might be an understatement. I was scared he was going to have an aneurysm at one point.”

“That bad?”

“Yep. And I got the lecture about needed to grow up and start taking an interest in the company because he wasn’t going to be around forever. Blah, blah, blah...”

Her friend wrapped her free arm around Ruby’s shoulders and gave her a quick squeeze, “Well, he’s kind of right, you know.”

“I know,” Ruby rolled her eyes. “But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Izzy, I don’t even know half of what the company does.”

“Maybe it’s time you learn.”

“Now you sound like him,” she sighed. “He still thinks this is just a phase that I will get over soon.” She snorted. “I’m going to be thirty in a week, you would think I’m too old to be going through a ‘phase’. She made quotation marks in the air with her fingers.

Izzy punched her in the arm, “shut your mouth. You’re not old.”

“Ouch, that hurt, you brat,” Ruby rubbed her arm and pouted playfully.

“Whatever.” Izzy walked over to the board and squinted at the formula that filled the entire bottom half of the 6X4 space. “You’re working on this again? I thought you gave up on it after Roger bawled you out about wasting valuable time on it.”

“Roger can go jump off a bridge,” Ruby huffed and came to stand by her. “I can’t seem to leave it alone. Something keeps nagging at my brain, like I’m missing something obvious.”

“All I can say is it’s a damn good thing your father provides the majority of the funding for this place.”

“And thank you for reminding me of that.”

“Sorry,” Izzy gave her a sheepish smile. Then her eyes lit up, “hey, I’ve got something for you. I know your birthday isn’t until this weekend, but you look like you could use some cheering up.”

She pulled a small box out of her purse and presented it to Ruby. 

Ruby took the box and opened it and teared up at its contents. “It’s perfect,” she breathed, holding up the necklace. It was the symbol for pi worked in white gold with a small ruby hung on a delicate chain.

“Here, turn around,” Izzy took the necklace and fastened it to her neck.

Ruby turned around and hugged her friend, “thank you, so much! I love it.”

Returning her hug, Izzy kissed her on the cheek, “you are more than welcome. Now, on that note, I have to get to work before Roger comes looking for me. See you for lunch?”

“Yep, same bat time.”

“Same bat channel,” Izzy completed the saying and dashed out the door.

Ruby smiled to herself and She picked up her phone from her desk and thumbed through it. As the beginning notes of the Violent Femmes ‘Add it Up’ came from the speaker on her desk, she went back to the board, picked up the stylus, and belted out the first line of the song with a big grin on her face.

****

Bruce turned another corner and looked down the bare corridor. He had been wandering for about fifteen minutes now and was thoroughly lost. Not that he minded. Maybe by the time he found his way back to the group, the tour would be over, and it would be time for them to leave. At least he wouldn’t have to lie about being lost. As he walked, he peered at the name plates on each door. He paused in surprise in front of a door with the name Ruby L. Beaumont, Ph.D. Under the name was ‘Applied Mathematics’. He could hear music through the closed door but couldn’t make out what it was.

“Mathematics, huh?” he mused. He would have never guessed the beauty that had tormented him all night and most of the morning so far, had a Ph.D., much less in mathematics. Then he snorted, at how sexist that thought was. Beauty didn’t have any correlation to intelligence.

This newfound knowledge added fuel to his growing curiosity about her. He was torn between knocking on the door so he could talk to her or continuing on his way rather than make a fool out of himself in front of her again.

The decision was made for him when he heard voices approaching from around the corner. He wasn’t ready to get back to the tour. Grasping the doorknob, he opened the door and entered the room quickly, shutting it softly behind him.

His ears were immediately assaulted by the music playing; some punk group from the 80’s that he had tried hard to forget. His eyes went to the sole occupant of the room, who was thankfully oblivious to his intrusion.

At first, he thought she was having a seizure, the way she was jerking around as she wrote on the board, but there was no way someone in the middle of a seizure could be singing. If the horribly off-key sounds coming from her could be called singing. Bruce leaned back against the door and smiled to himself. Ruby danced and sang with wild abandon. She was a sight to behold in her form-fitting jeans and tee shirt, her hair pulled back in a high ponytail that bounced with her movements.

When she started her interpretation on what could only be the Pee Wee shuffle, he couldn’t contain himself any longer; he laughed out loud.

Ruby immediately spun in place, her eyes round with panic and her mouth falling open when she saw him. She snapped it close and snatched her phone off the desk, turning off the music.

“What…?” she started, then closed her eyes and swallowed. “How much of that did you see and hear?” she asked, her cheeks turning a delightful shade of pink. She refused to look him in the eyes.

“Not nearly enough,” he chuckled. “Don’t let me interrupt. I’m just hiding from a tour group.”

“Hiding from…,” she tried again, “um, what?”

“Tour group,” he repeated. “Some guy, Bartlett, I think, was leading it.”

“Oh, I didn’t know.” She looked down at her feet and frowned. He didn’t think it was possible, but her blush deepened. “They don’t tell me much.”

Bruce looked around the cramped office. While the room wasn’t exactly small, it was crammed with file cabinets and boxes. For someone who’s last name was on the building, it was a pretty crappy office. Looking past her at the board, his eyes widened in surprise.

“Is that Riemann’s zeta function?” He stepped around her desk to stand by the board, his eyes darting back and forth over her calculations.

Ruby lunged towards the board and double-tapped in the upper left corner of the board, standing on her tiptoes to do so. The board went blank.

“No, no, no,” Bruce reached over her head and double-tapped in the same location. Instead of the problem reappearing on the board, a prompt for a security login filled the space.

“Damnit,” he impatiently slapped both of his palms against the offending surface on either side of Ruby’s head.


	3. Chapter 3

Ruby froze in place. Though Dr. Banner wasn’t a big man, he was still a lot bigger than her, dwarfing her petit five-foot tall frame. He was so close behind her that she could feel the heat from his body warming her in the chilly air-conditioned room. He smelled good, too. She could smell the soap he used along with a piney-smelling aftershave. It was understated and refreshing after the heavy scents some of the others around the building wore that just made her nose itch and eyes water.

His frustrated exhalation blew her hair, “bring it back up.”

She just shook her head.

In response he leaned in closer. “Why not?”

“It’s nothing,” she choked out, ducking under his arm and spinning away. As she put her desk between them, she regretted the loss of his warmth and wondered how warm his bare skin would be. The image of her touching his naked chest made her heart flutter and a warmth spread much further down her body.

The look he gave her was confused. “Nothing? If it’s nothing, bring it back up, then. What are you hiding?” His eyes narrowed.

She shrugged feigning indifference, “it’s just something I do when I’m bored. Some people doodle, I play with proofs.”

“That didn’t look like a bored doodle. That looked like a serious attempt to solve a problem that most mathematicians consider unsolvable.”

Ruby gave up the pretense and dropped into a chair pushed up against a stack of boxes. “Look, I’m not supposed to even be working on it. That is what I’m supposed to be working on instead,” she pointed to a stack of files on her desk. “If anyone finds out I’m wasting my time on that,” she pointed to the board, “I would get in trouble.”

Her head dropped and she looked at her feet, “I’d probably be asked to leave. They barely tolerate my being here in the first place.”

Bruce picked up a folder and opened it.

“Hey, you’re not supposed to see that. It’s proprietary.”

He looked up from the folder, “our tour guide, told us a lot more proprietary stuff than this.”

His brows pulled together as he thumbed through the file, then he tossed it on the desk and picked up another. He looked at it briefly before discarding it with a snort.

“That,” he pointed to the folders, “is what they have you working on?”

Ruby nodded, feeling mortified and dreading his next words.

“That’s a gross waste of your talent if what I saw on the board was any indication of what you are capable of.”

She looked up in shock. That was not what she had expected him to say. He was right, though. The work they fed to her was degrading. Just because she hadn’t gotten her Ph.D. from one of the more prestigious universities that the others had, it didn’t mean she was any less intelligent than they were. Her mother had been dying from cancer, and she refused to leave the city. Only at her mother’s insistence did she even continue to pursue her doctorate during those last months, but it had been worth it to see her mother’s proud face light up when she successfully complete it.

“You think so?” she asked in a careful voice. Dr. Banner was the first person since her mother passed away four years ago to offer her anything that resembled praise when it came to mathematics.

“You don’t?” he tilted his head and furrowed his brows. It was downright adorable, she thought.

Taking a deep breath, Ruby blurted out the truth, “of course I do. But what am I supposed to do about it? Nobody wants me here. I’m just tolerated like a spider up in the corner of the ceiling that can’t be reached, even with a broom, because of who I am. I mean,” she waved her hands around, “look at this office they gave me.”

Dr. Banner didn’t answer right away, and she flushed again with embarrassment. She should have just kept her mouth shut and sent him on his way. Now, he was going to think she was a poor spoiled little rich girl having a tantrum because she wasn’t getting any attention.

But again, he surprised her. Smiling, he held out a hand to her, “then show them how smart you are and quit hiding.”

Hesitantly, she placed her hand in his and let him pull her to his side of the desk.

“Log in.”

What the hell, she thought. What did she have to lose?

“Nothing at all,” he said from beside her.

She flinched. Crud, she must have said that out loud.

Swiping her ID card and typing in her password, she displayed her work on the board and stepped back to let him look it over.

After a few minutes contemplating her work, scrolling back and forth, following her scrawling formulas and calculations, he leaned back on the desk and looked are her quizzically.

“What made you combine Schoenfeld and Riesz’s approaches with the Odlyzko function?”

She leaned against the desk beside him. “Well, they came close and Odlyzko proved a part of it. It just seemed like a good idea at the time.”

She tried to ignore the heat she could feel coming from him so close beside her.

Leaning forward he indicated a section of her work with a circle of his finger, “what is going on here?”

Chewing on her lower lip, she scrolled to the last half of the calculations. “That is the part that is stumping me. So, I’m working on it here. There’s something wrong with this function, though, but I can’t quite figure it out,” She peered at him sideways, waiting on his scorn.

“You combined it with the work Stark and I did on the Loki’s scepter?” His voice rose in volume and he turned to look down at her with a thunderous expression. “That,” he pointed at the board, “is classified!”

Ruby cringed and backed away from him, “what?”

He stalked across the room towards her. Was she imagining things, or did his eyes flash?

“What are you doing with our classified files?”

His voice had gotten deeper and coarser and she could swear he got a bit bigger. He was certainly intimidating when he was angry.

“They were in the system,” she squeaked and held out a hand to keep some space between them.

He stilled when her hand contacted his chest. Yep, he was definitely bigger, and more muscular now. If she thought he was warm before, he was an inferno now.

“What system?” he growled.

She pointed at her computer with a less than steady hand, “the Beaumont Center’s.”

He didn’t even look at the computer, “How did it get there?”

She shook her head, “I don’t know. It’s an old file, from before I started here.”

He looked down at her hand on his chest and she yanked it back and cradled it to her chest like it had been burned. 

“Show me.”

“Ok,” another squeak. She scooted sideways and went back to the desk.

“I really don’t know how I found it. I was just bored one day and started being nosey about some of the on-going projects around here.” She leaned over the computer and scrolled through the files on the server. He came up behind her and leaned in to see her monitor. As nervous and jittery as she was, she was still acutely aware of his body and wanted him to get closer now that he wasn’t all growly. 

“I found this folder called ‘abandoned’ and couldn’t help myself,” she continued, trying not to babble. “This file was in it.”

She stepped back and let him have control of the computer. He had calmed down a bit, but he was still clearly agitated. 

“Shit,” he breathed and pulled out his cell phone.

****

“Where the hell are you?” Fury demanded when he answered Bruce’s call.

“We have a problem.”

“Tell me where you are and we’ll come to you,” Fury immediately picked up on the urgency in his voice.

“What is this room number?” he asked Ruby.

“112A.”

He relayed that to Fury.

“Stay put. We’re on our way.” The line went dead.

Bruce put his phone back in his pocket and turned back to Ruby. She had put the desk between them once more and was clutching the small pendant around her neck. Her small, white teeth worried her plump bottom lip as she gazed down at her monitor.

“Oh, no….” she muttered.

“What?”

“Someone is erasing the files.”

“What? Who?” he stepped around the desk to look for himself. Sure enough, where there had been about ten files earlier, there were now only eight and one had the word “deleting” in red beside it with a progress bar showing 50%.

“Shit. Do you have a thumb drive?”

“Yeah, I have several. But I’m not allowed to take any of them out of the building without proper authorization.”

“Give me one,” he held out his hand.

Numbly, she pulled open her desk drawer and grabbed the first one that she found, dropping it into his outstretched hand. Moving quickly, he plugged it into the computer and started transferring files to it. He was successful with saving four of the files before the screen went blank and a message appeared.

INVALID LOGIN  
ENTER CREDENTIALS TO CONTINUE

“Shit!” he stood back, “login again.”

“No,” Ruby shook her head, crossing her arms across her chest. “Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

Bruce was struggling to keep his anger in check, but this aggravating woman was pushing his buttons. He wanted to believe she was telling the truth, but how could he trust her when he knew Hydra was in play?

“We don’t have time,” he gritted his teeth. “Log back in.”

She hesitated, still chewing on her lip.

“Please,” he added.

Indecision flashed across her face, then determination. Stepping up to the computer, she swiped her card and entered her password.

INVALID LOGIN  
ENTER CREDENTIALS TO CONTINUE

“That can’t be right,” she muttered and tried again.

INVALID LOGIN  
ACCOUNT LOCKED BY SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR

“I don’t know what’s going on,” she gave him an anxious look. “There must be a mistake.”

“No,” he stood up straight, “they are covering their tracks.”

“Who?”

“Whoever stole those files.”

“Whoa! What do you mean ‘stole’?” she stood with her hand on her hips.

“Look, I don’t have time to explain right now. I’ll tell you later. Let’s go,” he grabbed her arm and steered her to the door of the office. “Fury and Rhodes should be here any moment.”

She stopped and yanked her arm out of his grip, “oh, no. I’m not going anywhere with you. I haven’t done anything wrong. You are the one nosing in where you don’t belong.”

He turned to argue with the willful woman, but the door burst open and men in tactical gear entered, pointing weapons at them. His chest lit up with three red dots, but more alarming were the two dots on Ruby’s chest.

“Get down!” he stepped between her and the intruders and unleashed his hold on his anger.


	4. Chapter 4

Ruby’s shock rooted her into place. Everything seemed so surreal, it was as if she was stuck in a bad movie. Dr. Banner’s command barely penetrated her thoughts, but when the shooting began and he started to grow bigger and greener, shredding his clothes in the process, everything came back into focus. A bullet whizzed past her head and embedded itself in the board. She squeaked in surprise, then, without another word, dropped to the floor and crawled under the desk to hide.

From her hiding place, she heard loud growls and grunts over the sound of gunfire. There was a thud and the floor shook under her and the desk rattled alarmingly.

She had known that Dr. Banner was the Hulk, of course, but knowing and seeing it happen were completely different. Well, she wasn’t seeing it so much as hearing it, and, from what she was hearing, it was terrifying. Still, curiosity gripped her. She had never seen any of the Avengers in action in person and here was her opportunity. If she could get up the courage to look.

A roar threatened to shatter her eardrums followed by a crash that was almost as loud as rubble fell around the desk. A large piece hit the desktop and one of the legs snapped, making the desk wobble and creak alarmingly. The front of the desk cracked under the weight and sagged in the middle.

“Oh, no, no, no!” Ruby realized that staying put was just as dangerous as making a run for it. Peeking under the bottom of the desk, she tried to see who was where in the office, only to cover her mouth to stifle the scream that threatened. Just inches from her lay one of their attackers, his helmet gone and a nasty cut bleeding from his temple. Crouching back away as far as she could under the desk, she fought to not lose it completely and hyperventilate.

“Okay, get it together, Ruby,” she whispered. “Think. Use that brain.”

Forcing herself to take another look, this time she could see that, even though his eyes were closed, he was still breathing.

“He’s not dead. He’s not dead,” she breathed with relief.

The prone man opened his eyes suddenly and he reached under the desk to grab her by the arm. Ruby screamed and tried to pull away from him, but he was stronger and pulled her out from under the desk. Her tee-shirt snagged on it, then ripped as she slipped free of the damaged piece of furniture, in the process scraping her back painfully on the splintered wood.

Yanking her too her feet non too gently, the man keyed his mic, “secondary target acquired. On route to rally point Bravo.”

“Understood, secondary target is on route to rally point Bravo. Be advised that the southern route is blocked by combatants. Northern route is clear,” a female voice calmly answered.

“Understood, command,” he replied, then ignoring her attempts to twist her arm out of his grasp, he strode to the door of her office. Or what remained of her office. The door hung by a single hinge and the other side of the doorway had been smashed open by something large and powerful.

As if to emphasize the disaster, or to make her even more miserable, possibly both, the fire suppression system chose that moment to activate, spraying cold water everywhere from the nozzles in the ceiling. Within seconds, Ruby was drenched to the skin and shivering in the cool air of the building.

Her captor seemed not to notice the water or care for her predicament as he towed her along with him down the hall. When they came to the end of the corridor, he paused long enough to look to the left. His colleagues were still engaging the Hulk about ten yards away and they were not faring well against the Avenger, even with automatic weapons. The bullets only seemed to make him angrier.

The walls surrounding were caved in and the single light fixture still intact dangled from the ceiling by just its electrical wires. It swung back and forth, causing the shadows of the hall’s occupants to move and flicker. 

Ruby counted seven people facing off against the Hulk. She didn’t think they had enough.

The Hulk’s massive form filled the space, appearing black where shadows fell and a dark green in the weak light. She tried to see the resemblance to the man she had found so compelling just a few minutes ago, but he wasn’t to be found in the visage that roared at the men shooting.

The man holding her had seen enough and turned to go to the right. Before he was able to pull her with him, Ruby caught a glimpse of more men coming up behind the Hulk carrying something large.

“Behind you!” she screamed to be heard over the noise, struggling against the man holding her. His grip on her arm was punishingly tight and was starting to cut off circulation to her hand, but she had enough of this. Turning on him, she punched and kicked, trying to break free. When that failed, she went after his exposed face with her fingernails, raking them viciously across the wound on his temple.

“Bitch!” he snarled and slammed her into the wall. Hard. Her cheek cracked against it and she cried out in pain.

Her cry was answered by another roar down the hall, encouraging her to fight through the pain. Pushing away from the wall, she turned to continue her assault when the blow came out of nowhere and impacted on her temple.

Ruby dropped like a rock.

****

“Oh, dear Mother of my dog,” Ruby groaned, “what did I drink last night?”

She hurt all over and her head was throbbing. To make matters worse, the contents of her stomach were threatening to make a reappearance. Alarmingly, she couldn’t remember drinking last night.

“Oh, thank God,” a familiar voice said from nearby. “Ruby, can you hear me? Wake up.”

No, this couldn’t be right. The surface she was sitting on was vibrating and there was an annoying noise that muffled all other sounds. Her shoulders were cramping, but when she tried to move her arms, she found that she couldn’t.

Cracking open her eyes cautiously, it took her a bit to focus and even then, her mind refused to comprehend what she was seeing. Why were her wrists shackled to the wall? The metal wall.

“Ruby, focus!” the voice demanded again.

She turned her head towards the sound and immediately regretted it. Pain exploded behind her eyes and her vision swam. She moaned in pain.

“Ruby!”

“Hush, already,” she croaked. “Give me a sec. I’m trying.”

“I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to push through this, and quick. I need you functioning.”

“You and me both, buster,” she retorted. Still, she opened her eyes again and, without moving her head, looked around.

She was sitting on the floor inside a vehicle of some sort with her hands shackled together to the wall slightly higher than her head. Only an arm’s length away was a very disheveled Dr. Banner. Bare chested with just the tattered remnants of his pants hanging from his hips, he too was shackled to the wall, but his wrists were encircled by cuffs that looked an inch think and on either side of his head. Around his neck was a collar that looked just as thick and heavy. There were little red lights on it that blinked on and off in sequence.

“What happened? Where are we?” she asked him.

He grimaced as he adjusted his position. Ruby’s eyes darted to his pants as they slipped further down on his hips, threatening to reveal a lot more of him. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry, and looked back up at his face, blushing furiously.

“I’m not sure,” he gave up on getting comfortably and met her eyes. “I think they used brainwave suppressor to subdue the big guy. When I woke up, we were chained up here and this was around my neck.”

“You mean they are keeping you from turning into the,” she dropped her voice and whispered, “Hulk?”

He rolled his eyes, “I think they already know he and I are the same person; don’t you think? But to answer your question, yes and no. No, this collar is not keeping me from turning into the Hulk directly. It is acting like a mood stabilizer and preventing me from getting angry.”

“And if you don’t get angry, he can’t make an appearance?”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing.”

“That makes two of us.”

The floor chose that moment to drop out from under her in a stomach clenching, but familiar, manner.

“Why are we in a jet?” she asked when she could speak without wanting to hurl.

“You’re guess is as good as mine,” he tried to shrug. “You know just as much as I do.”

“Well, you’re the Avenger, surely you have some idea?”

“Contrary to popular belief, we don’t know everything.” He shifted his position again and his pants slipped even lower. Ruby could clearly see his pubic hair.

“Will you quit doing that,” she looked away quickly, making her head pound.

“Doing what?”

“Moving around like that. Your pants are falling off.” She was pretty sure her blush went all the way to her toes.

“Really? We are chained up in a jet, being abducted by Hydra and you are going to be a prude about my dick hanging out of my pants?”

Ruby refused to look at him. “You don’t have to be crude; you know.” Then she paused as what he said sank in.

“What?” she whipped her head back to him. Her world swam and she may have blacked out because the next thing she was aware of was him nudging her with his foot and calling her name.

She had trouble focusing on him, “wha?”

“You need to stop moving so quickly. I think you have a concussion.” He looked concern.

“What was your first clue? The knot on my head or my lively conversation skills?”

His lips twitched, “good to see it hasn’t dampened your sarcasm.”

She snorted, a very unlady-like sound. “What were you saying about Hydra?”

“So, you were actually paying attention and not just looking at my junk,” he smiled.

“I was not looking at your, your…,” she sputtered.

“You’re adorable when you blush.”

“Oh, shut up!” she shut her eyes. “Shouldn’t you be figuring out how to get us out of this instead of making fun of me?”

He sighed. “You were out a lot longer than me; I had a lot of time to think.”

“And?”

“Everything I came up with involved my alter-ego or one of us getting free of our restraints. These,” he indicated his cuffs, “aren’t going anywhere without some super-strength and I don’t think yours are either. Unless there’s something you want to share?”

“Well, that’s less than helpful.”

“Those were my thoughts, too.”

“So that leaves the Hulk, who is being suppressed by your new jewelry.”

“I have an idea about that.”

“Let’s hear it,” she urged.

“It’s not pretty.”

“Uh, oh. Why do I have a bad feeling about this?”

“I need you to kick me in the balls,” he managed to say with a straight face maintaining eye contact with her.


	5. Chapter 5

“I need you to kick me in the balls.”

“Oh, no. There’s no reality in existence where I think that’s a good idea. Think of something else.”

“I tried and I keep coming back to it.”

“NO! I’m not kicking you in the, in your privates. Nope. Not happening.” She would have flounced away if she hadn’t been chained to the wall. Instead she slowly turned her head and avoided looking at him.

“Look,” he said, “this inhibitor only keeps me from getting mad. It doesn’t keep me from feeling pain. Pain might be able to override whatever signal it puts out and trigger my anger.”

“Are you listening to yourself? You said you think it inhibits your anger. You think pain might override it. You’re just guessing.”

“Ruby, look at me,” he coaxed. “Come on. Look at me.”

She turned slowly and met his gaze. “I’m scared,” she admitted, tears welling in her eyes.

“Me too,” he told her softly, “but we have to try something, don’t we?”

She nodded reluctantly. “What if it doesn’t work? What if I kick you and hurt you for no reason?”

He chuckled, “I think a pair of sore balls are going to be the least of my worries if Hydra gets us to wherever we are going, don’t you?”

“You’re right, I guess. So how do we do this?”

“I’m going to shift my position so you can have a better angle and you need to turn on your hips to get a good swing in with your left leg. You’re going to have to get over your embarrassment about my privates showing, though. There’s nothing I can do to prevent that, and you need to look to aim, okay?”

She chewed on her lip and nodded her understanding. Together, they shifted until they were both in position. He was right, his shorts had worked their way completely down and there he was in all his glory. She tried not to be embarrassed, but it was a losing battle.

“Ready,” he asked.

“Are you?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be. Just think of it this way. You’ll be able to tell your grandkids that you kick-started the Hulk.”

Ruby giggled at his bad joke, then kicked out with her foot as hard as she could, squeezing her eyes shut just before she made contact. Her foot jolted with the impact and she heard the whoosh of breath as it left him. Peeking out, she saw that he had tried to curl his body up around his injured parts.

At her gasp, he looked up and his eyes had that peculiar gleam to them that she had seen earlier.

“Again,” he ground out through his teeth.

“What?”

“Do. It. Again.”

He forcefully un-curled his body to present her target.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she chanted as she kicked again.

“Fuck!” he yelled this time when her foot connected.

“Hey! What’s going on back there?” a voice called out from the front of the jet.

“Again!” Dr. Banner yelled as someone made their way towards them.

She kicked again.

“What the fuck are you doing?” A rough hand grabbed her by the hair and pulled her hair hard, bringing more tears of pain to her eyes.

Blindly, she kicked he companion again, this time missing and catching him in the chin, snapping his head back.

The man shook her head by the fistful of hair he had and slapped her. Panicked, she kicked again, only to have a large hand grab her around the calf to stop the movement fling it away, almost dislocating her hip.

Her scream of pain mingled with a roar of anger.

“Fuck! Radio command that we have a problem! Their collar didn’t…,” his yell was cut off and Ruby heard the sickening thud of his body against the inside of the jet.

The jet listed wildly towards the side where she was chained, and a heavy weight slammed into her. Her body couldn’t take much more punishment, she thought. Her hip was a screaming knot of pain and her wrists felt like they were being sawed through with a dull knife. The upside was that her pounding headache didn’t seem quite so bad in comparison.

Hot breath blew across her face and she looked up into glowing green eyes set deep into a face that was almost twice the size of hers. When her eyes met his, he snarled and pulled back.

“Um, I’m really sorry about kicking you in your family jewels,” she cringed back against the wall, pulling on her restraints. “But it worked, so, um, you’re welcome, I guess.”

Warning lights and alarms sounded in the jet as the weight of the unpredictable Avenger unbalanced the craft. A shot came from the cockpit and a bullet clipped the wall just over Ruby’s head and showered her with metal chunks.

“What is it with these guys and guns?” Ruby rolled her eyes.

The Hulk growled, “Hulk smash,” then turned, and, moving more nimbly than something that big should be able, approached the narrow entrance to the cockpit. Two more shots rang out, then he grabbed either side of the dividing wall and ripped them free with no effort. Flinging them down, he reached through and grabbed the man that had been shooting at him and flung him through the window of the cockpit.

Unfortunately, that man had also been the pilot of the jet. With no one to hold the craft steady with a one-ton creature moving about, it tipped and careened out of control. Of course, it tipped away from the wall to which Ruby was attached, leaving her dangling in the air by her wrists, her feet scrambling for purchase on the floor that was now vertical.

Her scream drew his attention back to her. Easily finding purchase by punching holes in the craft, he came back to her.

“As much as I hate to be the damsel in distress, do you think you can help a girl out, Big Guy?” She tried to smile but it probably looked more like a grimace. She could feel blood dripping down both her arms from her abused wrists.

The Hulk cocked his head at her as if considering whether to leave her to her fate, then reached out and, with one finger, snapped the chain holding the cuffs to the wall. Ruby only dropped a couple of feet before he grabbed her around the waist, ripped a hole in the side (floor?) of the jet, and leaped out.

****

Bruce looked over at the woman passed out beside him and smiled. For as small as she was, she was a scrappy little thing. Despite being battered and bruised, she still had plenty of spunk up in the jet. It was a good thing all his injuries healed while he was transformed, because she packed a helluva kick. His balls hurt at just the thought.

She moaned and stirred.

“Am I dead? I feel dead,” she said weakly.

“No, we are both alive, and I am pained to say that you may have a future playing soccer.”

She groaned, “not funny, Dr. Banner.”

“Bruce,” he corrected. “I think you deserve to be able to call me Bruce at this point in our relationship.”

She pushed herself into a sitting position. “You mean the relationship where you humiliated me, then threaten me, then I kick you in the family jewels, then you jump from a jet with me? That relationship?”

He reached over and pushed her heavy fall of hair out of her face. “Well, maybe we got off to a rocky start.”

“How about you just buy me dinner and flowers next time, okay.”

“Deal.”

She looked around. “Where are we?”

“I think somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Maybe Colorado. I’m not sure. I didn’t stop and ask for directions.”

“Typical man, even when big and green,” she chuckled, then groaned, holding a hand to her head. “Ouch.”

“Yeah, you got quite a knot there, take it easy.”

Her eyes fell on her wrist and she held both out in front of her. Bruce had wrapped them with the tattered remains of her tee-shirt, leaving her in just her bra and jeans. “What the?” She looked down, squeaked and crossed her arms over her chest.

“You were bleeding and that’s all I had available,” he defended his actions.

“Oh, my Gosh! I’m half naked!”

Then she looked at him and shrieked, “You’re completely naked!”

“Very observant.”

“I’m stuck in the cave with a naked man. What is this? Naked and Afraid?”

He grinned, “well, if it is, we’re winning.”

She picked up a stone from the floor and lobbed it at him, “you’re not funny, Bruce.”

Even angry, he liked the sound of his voice on her lips. And how her breasts swelled above the top of her bra. And how fiery her eyes where when she was irritated.

Oops, he thought, as other parts of his anatomy took notice of his interest, better go back to thinking about her kicking skills.

“So, what now?” she asked.

“Well, we have two choices. We can either stay here and hope my people find us before Hydra does, or we can strike out on our own and try to find civilization before Hydra catches us.”

“Why do you think that was Hydra? And what would they be doing at the Center?”

“One of the reasons we were in Houston was to investigate recent Hydra activity in the area.”

“In Houston? Really? I hadn’t heard anything about it.”

“It wasn’t anything overt,” he explained. “Corporate espionage, server tampering, attempts at blackmail, that kind of thing. But it was starting to escalate. Last week, there was an attempted kidnapping of a software developer.”

“Oh, I heard about that. A lead programmer for HSH Cyber Security was attacked while she was jogging. But they didn’t say anything about an attempted kidnapping,” Ruby frowned and worried at her lip. “It sounds like they are going after data.”

“That’s what we thought, too. So, when a classified formula shows up on your board, you can understand why I reacted the way I did,” he looked her in the eyes. “I’m sorry if I frightened you back there.”

She waved away his apology, “I think we’re even, now. But now that you brought it up, it’s been bugging the heck out of me. What’s wrong with that formula? It looks perfect, but I just can’t quite figure it out.”

He chuckled. “We transposed two of the signs on purpose.”

Her brow furrowed and she chewed on her lip as she stared off into space. Then she nodded, “that makes sense. Why didn’t I see it? I’ve been worrying over it for nearly a month trying unravel it.” She looked back at him, “Why would you do that?”

He shrugged, “it was Stark’s idea. It was sensitive data and he didn’t want just anyone to be able to use it.”

“So, Hydra was in Houston fishing around for data, classified files were stored in the center’s server. Files that were immediately erased when we pulled them up. Then those armed men showed up and started shooting,” she paused, thinking about the implications. “Oh, my. Hydra has infiltrated the center. It is the only thing that makes sense. We are involved in the current efforts to get humans into space and put us on level footing with everyone else out there.”

She looked up, her eyes flashing with anger, “we have to get back and warn them.”

Standing up, she dusted the dirt off her jeans, “come on, let’s get out of here.”

Bruce had to hand it to her, she was a determined little thing.


	6. Chapter 6

Stepping out into the bright light of the midday sun, Ruby surveyed their surroundings. Bruce hadn’t exaggerated when he said they were in the mountains. The cave they had taken shelter in was high on a steep slope covered in loose shale. For as far as she could see, they were completely surrounded by other mountains, with no hint of human activity.

“Well, biscuits.”

“What are you, twelve?” Bruce asked as he emerged from the cave to stand beside her.

“No,” she blushed, trying not to look at him. It’s not like she’d never seen a man naked before. She wasn’t a virgin after all. She hadn’t been since she was seventeen and had given in to Cliff, her boyfriend at the time. It had been an awkward and painful experience and she had been terrified for weeks afterwards that she was pregnant because they hadn’t used protection. Since then, she had only been with one other guy, a grad student in what had been a one-night stand after a party where she drank a little too much. She had woken up the next morning with a terrible hangover and no idea where she was. After that, she had focused on her academics and avoided parties.

“Why do people always make fun of those of us that don’t curse?”

“Well, for one, you are cursing, you’re just not using the same words that everyone else uses. The only reason that those words are ‘bad’,” he made invisible quotes in the air with his fingers, “is that people use them for cursing. If everyone used biscuits instead, that would soon be considered a ‘bad’,” again with the fingers, “and everyone from the south would have to find a new word for biscuits.”

He stopped and looked at her triumphantly, like he just won a match against her. Which he kind of did. What he said made complete sense once she thought about it.

“You don’t have to look so smug. You’re the one standing their all naked for the world to see,” she huffed.

“Nobody likes a sore loser, Ruby. Now, let’s see about getting down from here.”

He started to look for a safe way down the slope, but something in the distance caught her eye.

“Bruce, wait,” she turned to look for him, but he was leaning over a boulder, looking at something below it.

My heavens, she thought, he has a nice butt.

“Bruce!”

“What?”

“Can you see that?” she pointed at the object in the sky she had spotted.

Bruce squinted at it, “looks like a helicopter.”

Ruby bounced just a little, careful not to jar her head too much, and clapped her hands, “fantastic! We can get out of here.”

She proceeded to wave wildly at the approaching helicopter, which was now readily identifiable in the clear sky above the mountains. Bruce hastened over to her side and grabbed one of her arms.

“Hold on,” he didn’t take his eyes off the craft. “I’m not sure that’s one of ours.”

“How can you tell at this distance?”

“Just a bad feeling.”

Ruby twisted in his grasp to face him and put her other hand on her hip. “Really? One of smartest men on the planet, and you’re going with a feeling? That’s not a very scientific approach. Where’s the evidence to support this feeling?”

“Um, how about the missile they just fired at us?”

Ruby’s head jerked towards the helicopter and, sure enough, there was a missile coming at them. Fast.

Bruce was already moving, dragging her along with him, “run!”

Together, they dashed to the lip of the ledge that ran in front of their cave and scrambled down the slope, slipping and sliding on the loose shale as they careened downwards. Ruby lost her footing almost immediately, landing hard on her tailbone and sliding several yards before she could stop herself. Bruce fared little better as he wind-milled his arms wildly to keep his balance.

From her vantage, Ruby watched as the missile whistled by over her head and struck the side of the mountain above them. The explosions jarred the shale lose under her and she started sliding again as chunks of rock and dirt rained down. Her ears rang painfully as she managed to get back to her feet and continue her unsteady descent. The dust blown into the air by the missile made it hard to see, but also hid them from the people in the helicopter that were obviously trying to kill them now. She caught a faint glimpse of the tree line and angled towards it.

Bruce was waiting for her under the cover of the evergreens.

“Are you okay?”

She nodded and fell into step beside him as they hurried deeper into the cover of the trees, “yeah. Why are they trying to kill us? We didn’t do anything to them.”

“You mean other than crashing their jet?”

“That wasn’t me. That was you. I mean, the Hulk. Whatever. You know what I mean,” she huffed as she half jogged to keep up with him. “And that was in self-defense. That doesn’t count.”

“I don’t think they agree with that assessment.” He grabbed her and ducked under a dense, low-hanging bow as the helicopter passed close overhead. With his arm wrapped around her waist, holding her close against him as they crouched, she was acutely aware of his naked body pressed against the bare skin of her back. It took her mind off the danger they were in momentarily, but in a very disconcerting way.

“Okay, let’s go,” he said softly in her ear, his breath raising goosebumps on her skin.

She hurriedly crawled away and stood up, “where now?”

His brow furrowed as he thought, “the logical option would be downhill and then follow whatever water we find down there. But they would anticipate that move and could easily track us.” He paused, “I think our best bet is to go parallel and stay up here in the trees. It would give us the high ground if anyone was trying to track us down below.”

It made sense, she thought, “which way then? Right or left?”

“Can you remember which way the sun was from the cave?”

“I think it was behind the mountain because I don’t remember seeing it.”

“So behind us is south-ish,” he aligned his body to face what they could assume was north. “If we are in Colorado, the mountains are all in the western part of the state, so we should go east. If I remember correctly, there’s a free way that runs along the eastern edge of the mountains from Denver south to New Mexico.” He turned left and set out again.

“It should be fun flagging down a ride with you naked,” she muttered.

“I heard that,” he snapped. “And we have to get there in one piece first.”


	7. Chapter 7

An hour later, irritated, scratched, scraped, and bruised, Bruce leaned against a moss-covered boulder near a trickle of a stream while Ruby dunked nearly her whole face in the cold water. When she finally came up for air she sputtered and flopped back on rocky incline.

“That tastes amazing! You should try this, Bruce,” she sighed with her eyes closed.

“I would, but you’re in my way and you freak out every time I get anywhere close to you,” he pointed out.

“Sorry, I get the hint.” She heaved herself up and moved away, making room for him. “But I’ve been thinking.”

Bruce ignored her as he lowered himself gingerly to his knees by the stream. Running through the evergreen forest naked was not the most ideal situation.

“If your clothes get destroyed every time you change, why haven’t you invented clothes that, you know, stretched or something, so that when you changed back, you wouldn’t be half naked? I mean, all the other Avengers have special suits, why don’t you? Surely you could come up with some kind of super-stretchy polymer?”

He stopped drinking and looked over at her, “we were just kidnapped by Hydra and you’re thinking about how to preserve my modesty?”

She shrugged, “There’s nothing wrong with that. You’ve been through this before, why haven’t you done something about it?”

"Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’ve been too busy saving the world and shit like that to worry about offending fragile virgins?” 

“I am not a fragile virgin!”

He smiled to himself as at her outraged expression. Standing up, he stretched, not caring if she could see all of him. “So, you’re a tough virgin?”

She blushed and spun away, “you’re just being a jerk now.”

He immediately felt bad about his behavior. “I’m sorry. I’m not exactly in my element here, you know.”

She sniffed, “and I am?”

“Point taken. Come on, we need to keep moving.”

“Can’t we just rest here for a little bit? We haven’t heard that helicopter in a while.”

“That doesn’t mean we’re in the clear. It’s pretty obvious which direction we’re heading. They could be ahead of us.”

Ruby faced him and planted her hands on her hips. “If that’s the case, then why are we rushing right at them? Maybe we should rethink our plan?” She squinted up at the sun, barely peeking through the trees above them. “We don’t have a lot of daylight left, so we need to figure out something.”

She had a point: they were probably barreling headfirst into an ambush.

“You’re right,” he admitted, ignoring the smug look she gave him. “Let’s follow this stream back up the mountain for a while and put some distance between them and us. Once the sun starts to go down, we need to look for a place to hole up for the night. It might be the middle of the summer, but the temperature will drop pretty fast up here.”

She nodded, keeping her eyes glued to his face. He suppressed a sigh. He needed to find some clothes. That brilliant mind of hers wasn’t doing them any good if it was fixated on his nudity.

****

After a brief argument over who would lead the way, they picked their way carefully up the creek, hopefully away from anyone lying in wait for them at the bottom of the mountain. Ruby was glad she wasn’t like some of the other women at the institute and dressed up for work. Her comfortable jeans and sturdy sneakers were ideal for this kind of activity. She was a little mortified that the bra she was wearing was chosen for comfort and not sexiness. Thank goodness that her jeans didn’t need to be sacrificed because she was pretty sure she was wearing the most non-sexy panties ever. The only thing they had going for them was the fact that they were clean and free of holes.

Compared to Houston, the weather here was mild. She would guess the temperature was close to the same, but without addition of the smothering humidity and the light breeze blowing through the shade of the trees, it was almost pleasant. In fact, as she pushed through low-hanging branches as she stepped from rock to rock, she could almost forget she was on the run from a super-evil organization bent on world domination. Still, before long, her bra was damp from sweat. 

Stretching to reach from the stone she was on to the next, she released the limb she was holding aside a little too soon and was rewarded by a grunt followed by a curse from behind her.

“Sorry!” she cringed.

She realized that she had been a very unsympathetic companion to Dr. Banner. Instead of working together to solve their dilemma, she had allowed her discomfort to make her argumentative and rude to him. She hadn’t stopped to consider his discomfort at having to traipse through an evergreen forest over rough terrain with no clothes on. Even right now, she was in the lead, not because she was the best person for it, but because she didn’t want to walk behind him and stare at his nudity the entire way. Then she had charged ahead, not caring if he was having difficulty keeping up on the rocks with his bare feet. Her face burned with shame and she came to an abrupt halt.

“What’s wrong?” he asked from almost right behind her.

She shook her head, “Nothing, I just need to take a break for a bit.” She paused before continuing. “If that’s alright.”

“No, that’s fine. I need a break too.”

Keeping an eye on her footing, Ruby picked a path away from the stream and found a cool, shaded area under a pair of tall evergreens. Bruce followed her and dropped to the ground a few feet from her with a grunt. He leaned his head back, stretching his neck.

Pretending to check the bandages on her bruised and raw wrists, Ruby studied him covertly. Bruce Banner was one of the least physically impressive of the Avengers when he wasn’t his green counterpart, but he was still quite attractive. She could tell that he worked out from his muscle tone, but he wasn’t bulky. Not fat, he still had a bit of extra flesh around his middle that kept him from having a well-defined six-pack. He sported a thick thatch of hair across his chest and down the center of his abdomen that trailed down to his…. Ruby jerked her eyes back up to his chest abruptly.

Yes, he was an attractive man, but that wasn’t why she had been so excited to meet him at her father’s event. He was easily one of the most brilliant minds in the world but, unlike the late Tony Stark, he wasn’t arrogant or full of himself. Ruby wished that they had met under different circumstances and that she was more socially adept. If Izzy were here, she would be chattering away, charming him with her outgoing personality and wit, and not at all bothered about his lack of clothing.

“Is something wrong with your wrist?” his question broke through her thoughts.

“What?”

He stood up and walked over to her, holding out his hand to take the wrist she was examining. “You’re frowning like something’s wrong.”

Gently, he unwrapped the remnants of her tee-shirt and turned her wrist in him warm hands. The redness was beginning to fade, and the cuts and scrapes were starting to scab over.

“It doesn’t look that bad. Let’s see the other one.”

Her other wrist was a little sorer, but it was her right one and she had pulled on it more while cuffed. Still, it was showing signs of healing.

“Not too bad either. I don’t think there’ll be any lasting damage.”

Carefully, he rewrapped them with the same cloth that had previously covered them since the only remaining items of clothing between them were her jeans, underwear, and bra. Ruby had been quiet during his examination, keeping her eyes on his hands and avoiding looking at his face. She berated herself quietly for acting like a fragile virgin as he had pointed out.

“I’m an idiot,” she blurted without preamble.

He laughed softly at her admission. “I’m not exactly at my best either.”

He gave her hands a brief squeeze before releasing them and stepping back. She hugged her wrists to her stomach, missing the warmth of his touch.

“You’re not doing too bad, all things considered,” he continued. “I know a lot of people that would have broken down into hysterics by now. So, cut yourself a break, okay?”

She drew a deep breath of the sweet mountain air and pulled back her shoulders. Meeting his eyes, she smiled.

“Let’s get going and find somewhere to spend the night.”

“That’s the spirit,” he smiled back.

Another hour later, exhausted from their climb back up the mountainside via the rocky streambed, they found a hollowed-out area formed by the roots of a tree growing on a small ridge. It wasn’t exactly a cave, or even out of the elements, but it would protect them somewhat. The sun was barely visible through the trees and the temperature was dropping quickly. Only the heat of their exertion was warding off the chill for the time being. They gathered handfuls of dried pine needles to line the hollow with, insulating them from the cool earth and providing a fragrant pad to lay on. A bigger pile of leaves and needles was mounded just in front of the hollow, to be used for additional insulation later if needed.

By the time they were through, the sun had disappeared, and they could barely see the forest around them. Next came the awkward part: sleeping arrangements. Ruby felt that Bruce should lie with his back against the rear of the hollow and her in front of him. That way, she reasoned, as little of his bare skin as possible would be exposed to the open air. But that meant that she would be sleeping with her back pressed against his naked front. Bruce felt that she should be the one with her back against the back of the hollow and he against her front so that she was out of the line of any danger that would come their way during the night.

“There are bears and cougars in these mountains,” he pointed out.

“I hadn’t thought about that until you pointed it out, thanks,” she said with heavy sarcasm. “Now I will never get any sleep no matter where you put me.”

“You have to admit that I stand a better chance against anything than you do,” he argued.

“Yeah, but if your body temperature drops too much during the night or you’re too uncomfortable to sleep, you’re not going to be worth anything tomorrow, and we still have a lot of walking ahead of us.”

“And if you’re mauled during the night, we aren’t going to get very far either.”

Frowning, she looked around on the ground. She saw a stick that could be used as a club somewhere nearby earlier, while it was still light enough to see. Using her foot to feel the ground, she walked in a tight circle in the area she remembered seeing it.

“What are you doing,” Bruce asked, hugging himself to ward off the chilling air.

“Give me a minute. Come on, I know it’s here somewhere,” she muttered.

“What’s there?”

“Ah-ha! Got it.”

Her toe found the stick and she bent to pick it up. It was about four feet long and she could barely wrap one of her hands around it. Solid and heavy enough to use as a weapon, it would do the job she intended. Walking back over to where Bruce huddled, she held it aloft.

“What’s that for? We don’t have anything to make fire.”

“No, silly. It’s for warding off bears and cougars.”

He shook his head. “Really? You are going to protect us from predators using a stick?”

“I’m going to use it to keep them at a distance, until you can do your thing.” She stuck her tongue out at him but was sure it was too dark for him to see. “Now, quit arguing before you catch a chill and crawl in there.” She pointed to the hollow with the stick.

He threw his hands in the air, “Fine. You win. I’m too tired and cold to argue with you anymore.”

Getting on his hands and knees to crawl into the space, she could barely see his pale skin in the darkness that shrouded the forest around them. She could hear the crunch of the needles and leaves as he made himself comfortable, then his heavy sigh.

“Ok, your turn.”

Using the end of the stick to feel her way around any obstacles, she walked over to the embankment. It only came up to her waist and the hollow they were using was only half as high. It was going to be a tight squeeze for both of them. She dropped to her knees and crawled into the hollow, dragging the stick with her.

“Ow!” she accidentally jabbed him with the stick.

“Sorry.”

Turning to sit on her backside, she scooted in further.

“Ow!” she kicked his shin with her foot.

“Sorry.”

She lay on her side and wiggled back until she could feel his body behind her touching in only a couple of places. She froze, unsure if she should snuggle in closer or not.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” he huffed in irritation, then reached around her with one arm and pulled her snug up against him. “I’m not going to bite you.”

Ruby could feel his breath against the back of her head and the chill of his body against hers.

“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I didn’t realize you were so cold. You should have said something.”

“Just go to sleep. We got a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

“Ok.”

Ruby was acutely aware of the man pressed up against her back and couldn’t make herself relax enough to go to sleep. Everything was just so awkward. First, she couldn’t find a comfortable position for her head. She tried piling some pine needles and leaves up under it, but they were itchy and poked her in the ear. So, she tried to use her arm, but ended up with her hand in Bruce’s face. After a bit of fumbling, he slid his arm under her, and she used it as a pillow.

“Better?”

“Thanks,” she whispered.

Then she discovered a rock under her hip. If she scooted forward off it, her bare back was exposed to the air. If she scooted back, she crowded Bruce. She tried inching down a bit to get her hip off it.

“Ruby,” Bruce growled in her ear, “if you don’t quit wiggling, we are both going to be embarrassed.”

“How?” She asked, then she understood. Her face burned. “Oh. Sorry.” She stilled and tried to ignore the rock. She tried to focus on other things, but as they warmed through their contact, she could feel every inch of him against her. The hair on his chest was soft against her back. His breath warm on the back of her head. The weight of his arm around her.

“Breathe,” he whispered into her hair. “You can’t hold your breath all night.”

“Sorry.”

“Just relax and try to sleep.”

“I don’t know if I can,” she whispered miserably.

Still, as she focused on breathing, the long, stressful day caught up with her and she drifted off to sleep. The last thing she remembered hearing was a soft snore from behind her.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So, I just read that the injuries the Hulk sustained while he was wearing the infinity gauntlet are permanent and will not heal. Unfortunately, it’s too late to go back and edit them into this story, so I’m just going to go with in my AU they did heal.
> 
> Also, since I’m in the mood to explain somethings, I want to address the question of whether Darling Bruce can have sex without “Hulking out.” Hulk fans seem to be split on the issue and the MCU sends out conflicting signals. In the last Hulk standalone movie (though it isn’t part of the official MCU, I’ve read it is MCU cannon), becoming the Hulk is linked to Bruce’s heart rate. If his heart rate goes up too much, he becomes the Hulk. Well, that would be problematic during sex. However, in one of the Avenger movies, it is linked to him getting angry. Hence, sex would not be a problem. Unless it was hate sex! If you branch out into the larger Marvel universe of comics, it seems to be linked to Bruce’s distress.
> 
> On a side note: I’m choosing to ignore Professor Hulk because that just creeps me out. Give me one or the other, not both combined. Let’s pretend that after Endgame, the two become separate entities again but Bruce is more accepting of his green half.
> 
> Anyway, back to Bruce getting laid. Lots of mixed signals out there in the Marvel universe. I’m going to go with the angry or distressed theories in this story because I want Bruce to be able to have normal human sex.
> 
> I haven’t decided it the Hulk will get in on the action yet….

****

During the early hours of the morning while the first rays of the sunrise had yet to reach their rough camp, Bruce woke up with Ruby wrapped around him, her face resting against his neck. Sometime during the night, he had pulled her close. One of her legs was sandwiched between him and pressed firmly against his groin, and one of her arms was draped over his midsection.

His cheek rested on her unruly mass of hair and he could smell the faint vanilla scent of her shampoo over the dirt and sweat from their hike yesterday.

He must have made a slight movement and disturbed her because she shifted and snuggled even closer to him. He had to admit she felt good, really good, in his arms. It was a shame she was so annoying and skittish. He couldn’t wait to see her reaction to their current position when she woke up. She would probably blush, then either apologize or blame him for being inappropriate.

Bruce almost snorted. Good thing inappropriate thoughts didn’t count. As it was, he would never take advantage of any woman, especially not one as young and naive as Ruby. Hell, he worked hard to keep all women at a comfortable distance. His alter ego along with his job as an Avenger posed a danger to anyone he allowed to get close. His thoughts turned dark at the thought of the last woman he let himself to care about.

Forcing those thoughts away, he shook Ruby’s shoulder gently, “Hey, time to wake up.”

At first, she buried her head in protest to his prodding. Then she smiled and rubbed her cheek against his chest like a cat marking her territory. He smiled at the thought.

“Come on, sleepy head. We need to get up and get going.”

“I don’t want to wake up,” she mumbled without opening her eyes. “I like it here.”

Her arm around him shifted and she pulled him even closer. The leg inserted between his rubbed against his crotch, causing a tendril of arousal to course through him. He knew he should put an end to this but couldn’t bring himself to push her away quite yet. 

The hair on his chest must have tickled her nose because it twitched. Her eyes blinked open and she frowned at this chest. Okay, he thought, here we go with the hysterics.

She surprised him, though. Pushing away from him a bit, she looked up and met his eyes.

“Good morning, Dr. Banner.”

“Good morning, Miss Beaumont,” he answered. “How’d you sleep?”

Her answer was a big yawn as she stretched, pulling her leg free from his. When it was over, she grinned at him.

“Not too bad considering how much you snore.”

He snorted, “of course I snored. I must have had half your hair down my throat at some point during the night.” He teased.

“Then maybe you can use some of it to floss.” She waved a delicate hand in front of her face.

“You weren’t complaining while you were all wrapped around me like a blanket.”

Ruby raised a condescending eyebrow, “I was cold, and you were generating heat like a furnace. I was just trying to stay warm.”

Bruce was surprised by the change in the woman, he had been ready for a number of reactions from her, but this was unexpected. Pleasantly unexpected. He found himself smiling back at her.

****

He was buying it. That’s good, she thought. During the night, she had woken up in the middle of a juicy dream about him and just about had a meltdown because she was so turned on by his naked body next to her. She was shocked that he didn’t wake up when she had almost scrambled out of their little nest. But then she had gotten control of herself and talked herself mentally through it. She knew she had been childish the previous day, but in her defense, she had been kidnapped by Hydra and then the Hulk destroyed a helicopter with her inside it. Stress, she told herself, can make a person do and say things they normally wouldn’t.

Before she went back to sleep, she had vowed to do a better job the next day. That included not making a big deal out of Bruce being naked.

Now, if only she could forget about how good it felt to wake up in his arms and the dreams she had about him.

****

The morning was cool and crisp as they set out. Ruby wrapped her arms around her middle trying to hold in some of her body warmth and felt sorry for Bruce. At least she had jeans to cover the lower half of her body. Fortunately, as the morning progressed and the sun rose in the sky, the temperature climbed rapidly and soon another discomfort distracted her. The last time she had eaten was breakfast yesterday and her stomach was making its discontent known.

Stopping in a clear area for a break, both Ruby and Bruce each found a boulder to sit on and soaked up the warmth from the stone and the sun. Ruby cringed at a loud growl from her stomach then giggled when it was echoed by an even louder one from Bruce’s.

“We’re going to have to find something to eat soon,” he commented unnecessarily.

“Fasting has been shown to improve both cognitive and physical performance over brief periods,” she replied. “But you’re right, if we’re going to be out here for a while, pushing ourselves, we will need to eat before the end of the day.”

“What do you think? Should we stick to our plan to go deeper into the mountains?”

“We used to come up here a lot when I was young, before my mother died. These mountains are riddled with trails, dirt tracks, and campgrounds. If we keep to a relatively straight line, we’re sure to come across one.”

“I was thinking along the same lines. It’s still summer, so there should be hikers and campers all over. If we can cross paths with some, maybe we can use their phone to get a call out to Fury.”

“So, onwards and upwards.” Ruby stood up and dusted off her butt. She looked uphill and frowned, “well, maybe not upwards. I say we continue to follow the creek between the mountains. I don’t think we actually want to summit any.”

“We might be more likely to run into hikers by going up, though,” Bruce stood and repeated Ruby’s motions unconsciously. She had force herself not to look, although she had been sneaking peaks throughout the morning. She had to admit his ‘attributes’ were generous.

“How about a compromise?” she suggested, mentally dragging her mind out of the gutter. “I don’t like the idea of being out in the open just in case Hydra is still looking for us, so why don’t we climb to the tree line and then circle around to the other side. That way, we can spot any climbers above us or intercept them. We’ll also be more likely to cross a trail that way.”

He thought about it briefly before nodding his head, “that’s a good plan. You ready?”

Ruby stretched her back to get rid of any remaining kinks left over from their night on the hard ground. When she straightened up and looked over at her companion, she caught him staring at her with unabashed admiration before he quickly looked away to study a magpie perched nearby. She flushed with embarrassment.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

As they climbed higher on the mountain, the soft layer of evergreen needles was replaced by exposed granite and loose rocks and their pace slowed. The tall, stately trees that provided abundant shade shrank in size and dwindled in numbers leaving them exposed to the high-altitude sun more often than not. What had been a pleasant morning hike was now a strenuous march upwards. 

Bruce had insisted on leading, picking out the safest route as he went, so every time Ruby glanced up at him, she was graced with a view of his ass and nether regions. At first, she was embarrassed and avoided looking up, but as the morning passed and after slipping and nearly falling several times when she failed to follow his lead, she pushed aside her discomfort in favor of more sure footing. Now, when she looked up at Bruce, instead of seeing only his nakedness, she focused on where he was placing his feet and what handholds he was using. When his foot slipped on loose shale, she noted the location so she wouldn’t make the same mistake. When he grabbed a root that pulled free, she made a mental note to tug on any roots she grabbed before she entrusted them to her weight.

Close to midday, as she scrambled up a cluster of boulders, she saw streaks of blood smeared on the gray stone. Looking up to Bruce a couple yards ahead of her, she caught a glimpse of the sole of his right foot. His heal was bloody.

“Hey!” she stopped and called up to him. “You’re bleeding.”

He didn’t pause but looked over his shoulder at her. “I know. Not a lot I can do about it right now.”

Ruby hurried to catch up with him. “Let’s take a break. We haven’t stopped all morning.”

Bruce stopped his climb and looked around, “there’s some shade over there.”

“Over there” was a flat area at the base of a tall boulder. There was just enough shade if they didn’t stand.

Bruce eased himself down on a relatively flat rock with a sigh and Ruby went over and knelt at his feet.

“Let’s see,” she held out her hands for his foot.

“You’re going to bother me until I let you see, aren’t you?”

She grinned up at him, “of course.”

Rolling his eyes like a teenager, he lifted his right foot and presented it for her inspection. Taking it in her hands, she examined it closely.

“Looks like some nasty blisters burst. This has to be painful, Bruce.”

“It is, believe me.”

She released his foot and motioned to the other, “Let me see that one too.”

He dutifully raised his other foot. It was in the same condition as the right foot. Ruby pursed her lips, thinking through the problem. Those blisters, besides being painful, were also an open invitation for infection. While she was sure he would survive anything nature could throw at him, it would slow down their progress and make life more difficult for him. The thought of him suffering quietly through something so obviously painful was heart wrenching.

They didn’t have many resources, so options were slim. Standing, Ruby unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans and started pushing them down.

“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, standing and grabbing her hand to stop her.

“You aren’t going to last long with your feet like that. They need to be covered at the very least and the only thing we have between us is my jeans.”

She shook off his hand and shimmied out of her jeans.

“This is ridiculous,” he huffed in exasperation. “The damage is already done and you running around naked isn’t going to change things. Besides, I heal faster than the average human, so put your pants back on.”

Her curiosity peeked; Ruby paused with her pants hanging from her hands.

“How much faster?”

Bruce shrugged, “if we stopped now, a couple of hours, I guess.”

“And if we don’t stop now?”

He massaged the bridge of his nose as he thought about his answer. “They will probably keep getting worse,” he finally said.

“Uh-huh.”

She started looking through the lose rocks nearby for one that could be used to saw through the thick seams on the denim. Finding one that looked promising, she spread the jeans out on the flat rock Bruce had been sitting on. Chopping on the inner seam at the knee of one leg, she managed to cut through it enough so that she could rip it the rest of the way. The outer seam followed and soon she had the lower leg removed from the jeans. Doing the same to the other leg, she made two tubes of material just over a foot long each.

“Sit,” she ordered him.

Reluctantly sitting, he dutifully lifted his foot for her. Tying a knot in the cut end to close it, she pulled the leg over his foot. With the knot, it only reached a couple inches up his ankle, but that was enough.

That works, Ruby thought. But how to secure it? There were her bra straps, but that would leave her too exposed for her comfort. Also, even with her light tan, she was starting to turn pink. If it came down to it, she would use them, but only as a last resort. She stared down at his denim covered foot in her hands, thinking. If only there was some of her shirt left over from when Bruce made the bandages for her wrists.

“Got it,” she announced happily and released his foot.

“What?”

She began to unwind the bandage around her right wrist. The cuts on her wrist had been mostly superficial and it had been almost 24 hours since they happened. Exposing the skin, the wounds were pink and scabbed over, warm but not hot to the touch. She gauged that they would be fine exposed to the elements if she was careful.

Ignoring her companion’s protests, she used the makeshift bandage to not only secure the pants leg to his foot but was also able to wrap it around his foot to provide a bit more padding. She repeated the operation on his other foot. Soon, both his feet were covered and securely wrapped.

Standing up and stepping back to admire her handiwork, Ruby nodded with satisfaction, “stand up and see how that feels.”

Standing gingerly, Bruce tested the foot coverings. “Not bad,” he said with a smile. “Not bad at all.”

“Not perfect, but it will do until we can find something better or get out of these mountains.”

“Speaking of, we better get going. I think we are close enough to the tree line that we can start circling around.”

True, the bare top of the mountain was clearly visible through the sparse trees and patches of boulders. Ruby was glad they weren’t going any higher. The air, though cooler this high, was thinner also and she had found herself gasping for air during the climb. Staying at the same elevation instead of continuing to climb wouldn’t be as taxing.

Pulling the remains of her jeans back on, she motioned for Bruce to proceed.

She soon found out how wrong she had been in that assumption. Walking along a slanted, uneven surface was just as hard as climbing up the face of the mountain. Her feet were constantly trying to slide out from under her as she followed Bruce, who was having the same difficulties. They were also having to go around clusters of boulders and over one cliff face. It didn’t take long before she was sweating profusely and panting for breath.

Stopping beneath an outcropping of stone for a quick breather, she was fanning herself and breathing deeply to get more oxygen to her body when she heard an alien noise amid all the natural sounds around her.

“Bruce, do you hear that?” she called out.

At that moment, Bruce’s feet slid out from under him and he slid down the slope a bit before sitting down hard to stop the slide. When the tumbling rocks finally stilled, he too could hear the noise. A high-pitched whirling noise that could be heard over the rustle of the few trees and the gusty wind.

“It’s a drone,” Bruce identified.

Maybe it was the thinner air, but it took a moment for her brain to parse that information.

“We need to hide!”

Both of them burst into movement, slipping and sliding down the slope until they reached a stunted tree with limbs that spread out enough to shield them from above. They crouched on either side of the trunk with their arms wrapped around it for support.

The whir of the drone grew louder as it approached. Soon, it rounded the mountain and came into view.

“Can you see anything to identify it?” she whispered.

“No, I can’t tell if it’s ours or Hydras. Hell, it might belong to someone completely unrelated,” he said with frustration.

“Do we take that chance?”

He shook his head, “I don’t think its friendly. Look.”

The drone made its way straight towards the tree that sheltered them without any hesitation. Once over the tree, it hovered like a large bee, then dropped to nearly eye level with them. It hovered just a few feet in front of them, letting its controller observe them at his or her leisure.

Without warning, Bruce hefted a large rock and threw it at the drone. The rock missed, but the drone dodged to the side to avoid being hit. Its movement took it too close to dead tree and its blades stuttered as they contacted the dry limbs. It wasn’t enough to ground the machine, but it wobbled in the air and slowed enough for the next two rocks, thrown by both Bruce and Ruby, to finish the job. 

The drone tumbled to the ground and rolled downhill for several yards before coming to rest against another tree. Bruce scrambled down to retrieve it. Using a piece of broken blade, he popped open the battery compartment and pulled out the battery, effectively killing the machine. Climbing back up to Ruby, he handed her the battery.

“Here, you carry this, and I’ll carry the rest.”

“Why carry it at all?” The drone must have weighed at least fifteen pounds and Ruby could see no need to lug it around.

“Because I might be able to reconfigure its transmitter to get a signal out.”

“Oh,” Ruby thought about it. She may have been a genius, but all her experience was limited to a lab. Bruce had a lot more experience out in the world than she did. She suddenly felt horribly inadequate.

“Are you going to do that now?” she asked.

“No. Whoever was piloting this thing knows exactly where we are, so we need to get moving now.”

With that, the two of them continued their course around the mountain. Spurred on by fear of getting caught by Hydra again, they made good progress and soon crossed a trail leading down the slope. The trail widened enough for them to walk side by side, so they made even better time and were soon at the base of the mountain.

Slowing down their headlong descent to catch their breaths, Ruby voiced a question that had been nagging her since their encounter with the drone, “Bruce, that drone came straight to us. Like it knew right where we were. How could that be?”

“I’ve been thinking about that same thing. They must be tracking us somehow.”

“But how? Neither of us have anything on us.”

“What about that necklace?”

Ruby clutched the small pendant to her throat, “my best friend gave this to me for my birthday!”

“How else would you explain it then?”

“Do you think they put something in it?” she held it out to examine but could see nothing to indicate it had been tampered with. The Pi shaped pendent was less than an inch square and the diamond set into it was less than half a carat. “I know the electronics for tracking can be extremely small, but I don’t see how.”

Bruce came over and took the pendent in his hand. He turned it over and leaned in close. The hair on the top of his head brushed against her nose, tickling it. Ruby involuntarily took a step back and stumbled over a rock embedding in the trail. Bruce caught her around the waist with his free hand and pulled her close to his body to steady her. She grabbed his shoulders for support.

They stood frozen like that for a long moment, before Ruby raised her head to look up at him. His face was close, and she could see his eyes darken as his concern for her welfare turned into something else. She was acutely aware of his hand pressed against the bare flesh of her lower back, holding her against him. Of their own accord, her hands reached up to clasp the back of his neck and pull him down to her and he didn’t resist as she rose up the balls of her feet.

Their lips met and they kissed softly. His lips were warm and firm, and Ruby wanted to melt into them. She pulled back slightly to search his eyes.

“Bruce,” she whispered into the narrow gap between them.

He didn’t give her a chance to say anything else. Dropping the pendant, he cupped her head and pulled her back to him. She sighed as their lips met again. When his tongue touched her bottom lip, she opened and gave him access to her mouth and met his tongue with hers, giving as good as she received. Drawing his tongue into her mouth completely, she sucked on it, and he crushed her body against his trying to bring as much of his skin into contact with her as he could.

A voice broke the silence suddenly.

“Hey, you two may want to take it off the trail if you’re going to do it. There’s a big group with kids coming up behind me.”


	9. Chapter 9

Ruby let out a short scream and darted behind Bruce to hide, leaving him to face the hiker in full Monty.

“Thanks for protecting my modesty,” he smiled sheepishly over his shoulder at her.

“He’s a man,” she poked him in the back. “If he sees something he’s never seen before, he can hit it with a stick.”

“Yeah, somehow that doesn’t make me feel any better.”

He turned his attention to the hiker as the man came up the trail to stop a couple yards downhill from them. The man was older than him, pushing his sixtieth birthday if not already there. The grey fringes of his curly hair peaked out from beneath his Panama Jack-style hat that was cinched under his chin. The khaki shirt he wore matched the shorts he had them tucked into. His hiking attire was completed by a worn pair of Birkenstocks, a makeshift walking stick, and a tan backpack. He grinned up at Bruce.

“You’re a bit old for this kind of foolishness, aren’t you?”

Bruce nodded and smiled back, “yeah, I thought so too. But someone decided they needed our stuff more than we did while we were cleaning up in a stream on the other side of this mountain. They took everything not on us.”

“Well, that amounts to just about everything for you, Friend.” He leaned sideways to catch a glimpse of Ruby. “It seems your gal is a bit better off.”

“You should try spending the night out here like this,” Ruby muttered from behind him.

“Oh, Lord, you were out here all night?”

“Unfortunately,” Bruce answered.

The man immediately unslung his backpack and pulled out a bottle of water. Handing it to Bruce, he scrunched up his face as he thought about their dilemma. 

“Well, I got a few things down in my camp. It’s not much, but it’s a damn site better than you have right now.”

“We’d appreciate that…,” Bruce let his sentence trail off.

“Larry,” the man supplied, stepping forward to offer his hand. “Larry Green.”

“Bruce,” he paused while he thought of a name, “Ross. This is Rose Bellman.”

They shook hands and Larry nodded to Ruby, “Nice to meet you Miss Rose.”

Before she could answer, voices drifted up to them from the trail below.

“That would be the group I warned you about. If you could get off the trail and go around them, I’ll meet you further down.”

“Sounds good,” Bruce agreed. “See you in a bit.”

Pulling Ruby beside him, he headed back into the sparse trees and angled down the mountain away from the trail.

****

Back at his camp, Larry rummaged around in his tent and produced a pair of shorts and two white tee shirts.

“Like I said, it’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.”

“We appreciate anything you can spare, thanks,” Bruce told him and tossed one of the tee shirts to Ruby.

As he pulled on the shorts, Larry pointed to his feet, “are those her jeans? That’s pretty smart. This terrain if rough on bare feet.”

Pulling on the tee shirt, Bruce nodded, “yeah, I found out the hard way.”

Ruby finally came out from hiding behind a tree. The borrowed shirt hung on her small frame and hung halfway to her knees. Bruce found himself wishing she didn’t have the shirt; she looked much better in just her plain white bra.

“Thank you so much Mr. Green,” she smiled at the other man and he responded by blushing red.

“Think nothing of it, Miss. And please, call me Larry.”

“Only if you call me Ru…Rose,” she stumbled over the unfamiliar name.

“So, Rose, Bruce,” he turned to look at Bruce, “I figure you guys have had enough of these mountains and want to get back to civilization.”

“You got that right. Can you tell us the best way out of here?” 

“I can do you one better: I got a map you can take. Here, let me get it,” Lawrence crawled back into his tent.

“Why didn’t you give him our real names?” Ruby asked in a low voice as she walked over to Bruce’s side.

“He might recognize my name. And if anyone asks about us, I don’t want him to have our real names.”

“So, you think there are so many couples running around in these mountains naked that changing our names will make a difference?” She snorted, “Excuse me sir, did you see Bruce Banner and Ruby Beaumont today? They would be naked. Why no, I only saw Bruce Ross and Rose Bellmont naked.”

“It’s Bellman, not Bellmont,” he corrected her, trying not to laugh out loud. “Alright, maybe I didn’t think it through.”

“You think?”

“Here we go,” Larry crawled out of his tent, waving a folded map. He took two steps away from the tent, jerked, then pitched forward, landing on his face.

“Larry!” Ruby screamed dashing towards his prone body. A dark bloom started between his shoulders, spreading quickly.

Lunging forward, Bruce grabbed her arm and pulled her away, “run!”

“We can’t just leave him!” Ruby fought against him, trying to reach the fallen man.

“He’s gone,” he ground out, “and you will be too, if you don’t run now.”

She turned to him with tears in her eyes, “what about you?”

He gave her a tight smile and pushed her towards the trees, “I’ve had enough of this.”

****

“I’ve had enough of this.”

As he said it, his voice grew rougher and his eyes flashed green. Even as he pushed her away from him and turned away, she could see that he was changing.

“Hey! Wait, you just got those clothes,” she yelled at his retreating back, but it was too late; he had already ripped the shirt off. 

“Idiot,” she huffed.

A bullet struck the dirt near her feet and she gave up on saving Bruce’s clothing to make a dash for the safety of the trees. The forest floor was relatively smooth and sloped gently downhill as she barreled away from the fire fight behind her. A loud roar filled the air and she couldn’t help grinning.

“Get them, Bruce.”

Running downhill was deceptive. It seemed easy, but it took effort to maintain control and not end up tumbling head over heel. After a morning of hiking, Ruby tired fast and slowed down to catch her breath. Through a break in the trees, she could see the trail and debated the merits of following it. Traveling on the trail would be faster than staying in the woods and it would lead her to a road eventually, but it would also make it easier for Hydra to find her. It would likewise make it easier for Bruce to find her.

With that thought, she slipped through the trees towards it. She paused for a moment and glanced back up the trail, thinking she might have seen movement but, when nothing else moved but the trees in the slight breeze, she turned and began to jog downhill.

After ten minutes at a steady pace, she heard something behind her in the trees and paused, ducking behind a twisted juniper for cover. Peering back up the mountain, she caught a glimpse of movement in the trees to the right.

“Please be a squirrel. Please,” she muttered, holding perfectly still and straining to get a better look.

Her patience paid off with a glimpse of black moving too high off the ground to be any small forest animal.

“Why can’t it ever be a squirrel?” she sighed quietly.

She looked down and found a rock that was small enough for her to throw but big enough to make noise when it hit the ground. She bent slowly, keeping her eyes trained on where she had seen the movement, and found the rock by touch. Standing back up, she waited for another flash of movement. When she saw it a few yards further down the mountain, she heaved the rock as hard as she could back up the mountain and on the other side of the trail from her pursuer. The rock flew through the branches, making noise as it went then hitting the ground with a thud and a clatter of loose rocks.

Crouching, she held her breath. The entire forest around her seemed to fall silent as if it too was holding its breath. Just as she tentatively released her breath, there was a flicker of movement going back up hill, angled towards the thrown rock. She couldn’t believe that actually worked.

As the movement moved away from her, she eased back out on the trail and, crouching, made her way down it as quickly and quietly as possible. When she thought she was far enough away from her pursuer, she stood up straight and began jogging again. She had to reach a road soon.

As she followed the trail, she would stop periodically to listen and look for movement behind her, but she saw no further evidence of being followed. That didn’t make her feel confident, though. It’s what you don’t see coming that always gets you, she thought. When she felt like she couldn’t jog anymore, she kept up a brisk walk.

She had no idea how long she had been following the trail when it converged with another. At the Y formed by the juncture, a sign stood. An arrow pointed back up the trail she had just come down with “Mineral Mountain Summit Trail”. Another arrow pointed up the other trail with “San Luis Peak Trail”. She still had no idea where the heck they were, but at least she was on the right path back towards civilization as she continued down the unmarked leg of the trail. It had to lead somewhere.

A while later, sweaty and exhausted, Ruby exited the trail at a small gravel parking area on the side of a highway. Rive cars were parked there, but nobody was in sight. A large wooden sign near the beginning of the trail had a laminated map of the area. Locating the star with “you are here”, she located the nearest town: Lake City. It looked small, but it was close, only about five miles away, give or take. 

One of the cars had two bicycles strapped to the roof and Ruby chewed on her bottom lip as she argued with herself about taking one. Stealing was wrong no matter how justified and she was sure the bike was expensive. Still, there was no way she could run the five miles to Lake City. Making up her mind, she memorized the license plate number so she could find and reimburse the owners later and unstrapped the smaller of the two bikes.

Within minutes, she was on the highway peddling towards Lake City. At first, the road wound its way down the side of the mountain, and she could coast easily, but when it began its ascent up the next mountain, she struggled to keep her momentum. Even in the highest gear, it felt like her thighs were on fire and she was pretty sure she could walk faster than she was peddling. She had believed herself to be in good shape, but the last two days were making a mockery of her physical fitness.

She barely heard the truck coming up the road behind her over her panting and hammering heart. When the driver sounded his horn behind her she panicked, twisting the handlebars of the bike hard to the right and crashed into the rocky face of the mountain that abutted that side of the road. Landing awkwardly, she felt something crack in her left wrist and just laid on the ground cradling it, trying to keep from crying in pain and frustration.

“Are you alright?” the driver of the truck called out as he ran towards her.

Tears leaked out of her closed eyes, “I need to get to Lake City to get help.”

“Here, let me help you up.”

The man carefully grasped her other arm and pulled her to her feet, his brown eyes full of concern.

“Can you take me there?”

“Of course,” he nodded, helping her limp away from the fallen bike. As they walked to where he had stopped his rig past her on the road, she could see it was a big semi-truck pulling a long, black trailer.

“I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t come along when you did,” she smiled up at her would-be rescuer.

“Well,” he smiled back, “you wouldn’t have wrecked your bicycle, that’s for sure.”

She shook her head, “I don’t know about that. I was about out of juice.”

As they approached the back of the trailer, the door swung open and two men in black jumped to the ground.

“Oh, no!” she shrieked as she tried to pull away from her fake rescuer.

The man grabbed her injured wrist and gave it a squeeze, making her eyes water and her legs nearly give out beneath her.

“That’s a good girl,” he caught her around the waist and breathed in her ear when she stopped fighting. “We’re just going to take you back to your Father. We don’t want to hurt you, so stop fighting.”

Nearly swooning from the pain from her wrist and exhaustion, she almost missed what he said.

“My father? You said my father?”

“Right. Behave and you’ll be back with him in no time.”

This time when her eyes filled with tears, it wasn’t from the pain.


	10. Chapter 10

Ruby didn’t continue her struggles and let herself be led to the back of the trailer in a daze. It all made sense now. Her father’s involvement with Hydra explained why he was so adamantly against her working at the institute. If the institute was just a front for the organization, of course he wouldn’t want her involved. It also explained why she was shut out of so much that went on there. Her math and logic abilities weren’t in question. No, her trustworthiness was.

With good reason, she thought. There was no way she would ever condone or support Hydra. It was a terrorist organization through and through. More lives had been lost because of its plots and machinations over the years than had been lost during the last two, no, three alien invasions. The only event more catastrophic had been when half the life on the planet had been snapped out of existence by Thanos. The history books might not mention it, but Hydra had been part of every genocidal event that had taken place since WWII.

And her father was in bed with them. The knowledge was mind-numbing with its implications. How much of her lifestyle had been financed by his involvement? How much blood was on her hands because of his duplicity?

She snapped out of her daze as two pairs of hands reached down from the trailer to pull her up into it. Once inside, she looked around with more interest. The trailer was split into two functions: one was a laboratory where three technicians worked feverishly on a collar similar to the one used on Bruce when he was captured at the institute; the other was a surveillance center with multiple screens for tracking targets.

Two of the screens showed a very angry Hulk running through the forest.

“We need to roll,” one of the soldiers told the others. “How much time do you need?”

One of the techs working on the collar looked up from her work, “five minutes.”

“You don’t have that. Make it three.” He turned to the other two soldiers, “secure the trailer.”

As the other two jumped down and swung the door shut, Ruby turned to the one giving orders.

“Wait. Why do you need me? I don’t know anything.” It was the truth.

“We know,” he said frowning. “You’re worthless as far as I’m concerned. But you do serve a purpose: as bait. For some reason, that green monstrosity out there wants to protect you and I’m going to use that to our advantage. Now go sit down out of the way and be quiet, or I’ll put a bullet in you and use your corpse instead.”

“My father wouldn’t be happy if you killed me,” she pointed out.

The soldier laughed mockingly, “why would I care?”

Deflated, Ruby obediently sat down on the nearest stool near the monitors. The trailer lurched under her as the semi-truck was put into gear and started rolling forward. As it gained speed, she watched the monitors. There were still at least a dozen soldiers out there, all firing their weapons at the Hulk. Of course, all they did was make him angrier and she watched with amusement as he picked p black-clad man up and flung him through the air like a ragdoll. The soldier went sailing over the tops of the trees, out of sight.

“We got it, sir!” one of the lab techs announced, stepping aside to make room at the bench.

The soldier in charge walked over to inspect their work.

“And this will work?”

“It should,” answered another tech. “The prototype failed because he could still feel pain. This one has a nerve dampener installed. That’s what took so much time. Trying to combine the two technologies.”

“It better. I’m out of patience.” He turned to Ruby, “you’re up.”

“I don’t understand.” What exactly did he think she was going to do?

Covering the distance between them in three strides, he pulled her up from the stool and steered her over to the monitors.

“You’re going to give me a good scream.” He grabbed a microphone with his free hand and held it close to her face.

She shook her head, “not going to happen.”

He put the microphone down on the console and pulled a knife out of his belt. It was a large, vicious-looking weapon almost as long as her forearm. He held it up to her face for her to inspect it. The cutting edge gleamed in the artificial light and she could see her eyes, wide with fright, reflected in its surface.

“You are going to scream for me, or what little use I have for you will be gone. Do you understand what that means?”

Ruby swallowed and nodded slowly.

“Um, sir?” one of the technicians cleared his throat.

“What?”

“I, um, don’t think she needs to scream to get his attention.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look at the monitors, sir.”

Keeping his grip on her arm, he turned to look at the bank of monitors. On the far left, a monitor showed the road the semi was following. In the middle stood the Hulk, becoming closer as the rig approached. Ruby felt the trailer slowing down.

“Commander,” the driver’s voice came over the speakers, “we have a situation.”

The soldier shoved Ruby away from him and keyed the mic, “stop the rig.”

He pressed a button to change channels, “Lincoln, do you have eyes on the target?”

“Yes, sir,” another voice answered over the sound of a helicopter.

“Do you have a clear shot?”

“Roger that.”

“Take it.”

On the road, the Hulk roared a challenge at the truck and took a step forward. He was instantly pinned to the asphalt by a metallic net. Spaced evenly around the edge, barbed spikes were hydraulically driven into the ground, securing the enraged Hulk.

The soldier turned to the techs, “will it hold?”

“It should, yes,” the woman replied not taking her eyes off the screen as the Hulk thrashed against the netting. “It’s an engineered blend of nano-technology and vibranium. It could withstand a nuclear detonation.”

He nodded, “good. Grab the collar and come with me.”

“Me?” she squeaked, looking at the soldier.

He raised his gun and pointed it at her head, “yes, you. Unless you are disobeying my order. Are you?”

Ruby could see the woman swallow her response. It would have been comical, if she hadn’t been in the same situation just moments before. Now, she almost felt sorry for the technician.

“No, sir,” she said quietly and picked the collar up from the bench.

Ruby could tell it was heavy and she struggled with it for a moment.

“You,” he motioned impatiently to another technician with his pistol, “help her.” 

He didn’t give the man time to argue as he strode to the back of the trailer and unlatched the door. Pushing it open, he jumped to the ground and waiting for them to follow.  
When the three disappeared from site, Ruby and the tech left in the trailer turned their eyes back to the monitors. Ruby knew she should take advantage of this opportunity to make a run for it but couldn’t pull herself away from the drama unfolding on the screen.

As a group of soldiers approached, led by the man that had threatened Ruby, the Hulk stilled momentarily to watch them warily. They fanned out to surround him and the one in charge motioned the techs forward. At the sight of the collar, the Hulk renewed his struggle against the net.

She couldn’t hear what was being said, but the roars of the Hulk could be heard through the walls of the trailer. The leader grabbed the collar from the timid techs and stepped up to the thrashing prisoner. Before he could get the collar close enough to even make contact, the Hulk jerked back with a mighty shove against the pavement. Ruby could see it buckle under the pressure. A spike came loose as the asphalt it was buried in tore free in a chunk.

“Come on. Come on,” she encouraged, gripping the console with white knuckles.

The remaining tech looked at her and snorted, “not a chance. That net isn’t going to break.”

“It doesn’t have to,” she told him.

As if he heard her, the Hulk heaved and strained against the net. It dug into his back but didn’t break the skin. Two more chunks of asphalt were ripped from the road along with the spikes in them.

“Holy, shit,” the tech breathed.

“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” she asked.

He looked at her like she was from another planet before snorting, “shut the fuck up, Blondie.”

“I’ve had enough of this,” she announced. “I’m getting out of here.”

He grabbed her by the arm as she walked past him, “you’re not going anywhere. Sit down and shut your yap up.”

She shook off his hand and shoved him backwards, “get your slimy Hydra hands off me!”

He staggered back and caught himself against the lab work bench. Outside, gunfire sounded as the soldiers open fired on the Hulk. Over that was the whaap-whaap-whaap of a helicopter followed by the louder retort of the gun mounted to it.

“I guess they gave up on taking your lover alive,” the tech smirked at her.

“He’s not my lover,” she corrected indignantly. “And all they’re going to do is make him madder.”

To prove her point, a roar rattled the trailer. The tech paled and glanced at the monitors.

Taking advantage of his distraction, Ruby ran past him and jumped out of the trailer. Ignoring the fight taking place on the road in front of the rig, she ran back up the road until she was around a corner, and then veered off heading back into the forest.   
Running downhill, she went as fast as she could while still maintaining control of her descent.

Stopping to catch her breath in the dark undergrowth that grew over a trickle of water at the junction where the mountain she just ran down met another one, she listened intently. The gunfire had stopped as had the roars from the Hulk.

“Please have escaped,” she whispered into the quiet.

A noise from her left made her creep forward to peer through the foliage. It was a car coming towards her on the highway. The roadway curves sharply towards her and a short bridge spanning the tiny stream. The bridge was less than twenty yards from where she crouched.

Scrambling out of her hiding spot, she ran towards the road to intercept the car. Waving her arms wildly to catch the attention of the driver, she approached the bridge and hauled herself over the short railing. The car slowed as it approached but showed no sign of stopping.

“Oh, come on, you can’t just drive past me,” she said aloud as she stepped out onto the road, into the path of the car.

The car did indeed come to a stop a few feet away from where she stood panting.

“Are you crazy, lady?” the driver yelled at her. 

He might have been younger than her, but it was hard to tell with the bushy red beard he sported. As she approached his side of the car, he glared at her.

“We need to get out of here,” she told him and pointed up the road in the direction he was heading. “There are Hydra soldiers up there trying to capture the Hulk. It’s not safe.”

He shook his head, “sure, whatever,” and started to roll up his window.

“No! You don’t understand, we’re in danger if we stay here.” She lunged forward and grabbed the edge of his window to try to keep it down.

“Look, you probably just got some weed laced with something. It happens. Just go back to your camp and take a nap. When you wake up, it’ll be okay. Okay?”

“You know what?” she threw up her hands. She was tired of everyone pushing her around or treating her like an idiot. “No, it’s not okay. In fact, it is as far from okay as it can get!” She grabbed the door handle, praying that the car was in park, and jerked it open.

“Whoa, lady! What the hell!”

“If you want to stand around waiting for Hydra or the Hulk to come down off that mountain, be my guest. But I’m leaving!”

She grabbed him by the arm and yanked him out of the car with more strength than she thought she was capable of. As he stumbled and fell on the road, she jumped into the car and slammed the door. Reversing, she made a neat three-point turn on the bridge before putting the car into drive and stomping on the accelerator.

Driving as fast as possible on the mountain road, she spied his cell phone and grabbed it. Hitting the ‘emergency call’ icon on the screen, she held the phone to her ear. Nothing happened. Looking down at it, she saw that there was no signal.

“I can’t catch a break at all, can I,” she wailed and threw the useless phone in the seat beside her.

As the road turned to begin its descent towards Lake City, she glanced in the rearview mirror. There was a smudge of halfway up the slope of the other mountain.

“I hope you gave them heck, Bruce,” she smiled.

Then screamed as the car hit a large object in the road. It would have gone flying if the Hulk hadn’t caught it and dropped it back onto the pavement.

Dazed once more, Ruby stumbled out of the car. The front end was completely caved in and was leaking fluids. It wasn’t going anywhere.

“Are you kidding me?” she yelled up at the sky. “What did I do to deserve this?”

When the heavens didn’t answer her question, she turned back to the Hulk and the wrecked car. Hulk shook his head and stumbled away. Concerned, she followed. She couldn’t see any wounds on him, but she knew he had been shot multiple times.

“Are you okay?”

He stumbled and seemed to shrink. Nope, he was definitely shrinking. And growing less green. Within a minute, Bruce Banner stood in his place, holding on to a tree for support.

Ruby signed wearily and shook her head.

He was naked again.


	11. Chapter 11

The walk down into Lake City was quiet. Fortunately, the owner of the car had a suitcase stuffed with clothes consisting primarily of board shorts and band T-shirts. Unfortunately for Bruce, the guy was built a lot slighter than him, so everything was skintight, and he couldn’t fasten the shorts. He pulled the front of the Def Leppard shirt down far enough to cover it, but it kept crawling back up, so eventually he gave up and just held on to its edge. Rose couldn’t look over at him without wanting to giggle at how ridiculous he looked, so she just kept her eyes on the road. 

When the silence threatened to swallow her whole, she said with exaggerated slowness, “So…, you just had to destroy the car.”

“I really don’t have any control over the big guy, you know. It’s not like I’m piloting a robot or anything. Hell, I can barely remember what he does when he’s in control and on a rampage.”

The conversation clearly put him on edge. “You really have no control?”

“None. Nada. Zip. Zilch.”

She considered his response as silence again descended between them.

“So…,” she tried again.

“Nope,” he answered shortly.

“But…,”

“Ruby, don’t.”

“Bruce…,”

He stopped and threw his hands up in the air, “what part of ‘no control’ do you not get?” He shouted.

Ruby had had enough of his attitude. Marching up to him, she planted herself in front of him and scowled fiercely up at him. “If you will stop interrupting me and let me finish a dang sentence, you will know I’m not asking you about that.” She emphasized her sentence with strategic pokes to his chest.

This time, when he held up his hands, it was in surrender and there was a look of astonishment on his face.

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry.”

Satisfied with his response, she spun away from him and continued walking along the road at a brisk pace. Staring after her for a moment in shock, Bruce hurried to catch up with her.

After a few yards, he asked, “are you going to tell me what you were going to ask?”

“Nope.” Two could play that game, she thought.

“Really?”

She refused to answer and kept walking, not looking at him at all.

“You’re being childish,” he told her. He pointed to a boulder the size of a car on the edge of the road, “there’s a rock you can kick if you want.”

That was it, she’d had it with him. Turning on him again, she let him have it.

“You think this is funny? Do you think I’m enjoying this? Because, believe me, I’m not! If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t even be here! This is all your fault!”

There. She said it. Tears gathered in her eyes, but she swiped at them angrily.

“My fault? How is this my fault?”

“If you hadn’t barged into my office and snooped, this would have never happened.” She crossed her arms and dared him to deny it.

“Oh, so you don’t mind that you were a pawn in one of Hydra’s schemes?” He countered.

“You don’t know that!”

“No, you’re right, but you have to admit it’s pretty suspicious that those files were just out there, unsecure, waiting for you to find them and start working on them.”

That took the wind out of her sails. “I know,” she said dejectedly. “When they were shoving me into the back of that truck, they practically said my father was involved.”

She had to look away at the look of sympathy in his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Ruby.”

A truck came around the curve and slowed. Grateful for the interruption, Ruby turned and waved at the driver. Rolling to a stop beside them, the driver, an older man with a beard, rolled down the passenger window and called out to them.

“You guys okay?”

She walked up to the window and put on her best distraught face, “Oh, wow! I’m so glad you came by. We had an accident up the road a way and need to call someone to come get us. Can you give us a lift into town and point us to a phone we can use?” Blinking, she allowed her tears from their argument drip from her lashes.

“Ah, now, missy, don’t you worry,” the driver said with concern. “Hop in and I’ll take you and your husband to the general store in town. I’m sure Jenny will let you use the phone there. Cell phones are crap out here, or I’d lend you mine.”

“Thank you, so much,” she gushed, pulling open the door and climbing in. She scooted over next to the driver to make room for Bruce. Once they were inside, the man turned the truck around and headed back towards the town.

“I’m Ruby and this is Bruce.”

“Oh, sorry, I’m Leroy, Leroy Baker. Where you folks from?”

“Houston.”

“You’re a long way from home.”

“Yeah, but it’s so pretty around here. Tell me, what do you do?”

“Oh, a little of this and a little of that. I do a lot of maintenance work for the lodges, the marina, and all the vacation cabins in this area.”

“So, you know this area really well?”

“Better that most, I’d say. Why?”

“Is there a helicopter charter company around?”

“Yes, there is. On the other side of the town. Old Bart runs it, but his boy Bobbie does all the flying nowadays.”

“Good to know. There’s no telling how long it will take for someone to come pick us up, so it’s something to think about.”

“Well, it’s the height of the season, so unless you have reservations, you might be out of luck.”

Leroy considered what he said, “does that mean we won’t find somewhere to stay while we’re stuck here?”

“Naw, there’s always some open rooms at the lodges and empty cabins. I’m sure you guys will be fine.”

As they drove around the curve, Lake City came into view. To call it a town was exaggerating, Ruby thought as they drove past the entrance to Cannibal Cabins.

“Cannibal Cabins?” Bruce asked. “That’s gruesome.”

“Oh, you don’t know the story?” Leroy laughed.

“Fraid not.”

“Back in the 1800’s a local guide by the name of Alferd Packer took 5 men out and came back without them. Their cannibalized bodies were discovered later. Ole Alferd was tried 3 times before convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison.”

“Yep, that’s gruesome,” Bruce repeated.

“We even have a museum with a fragment of one of his victim’s skulls complete with teeth marks,” Leroy cheerfully added.

“Oh, please, Honey,” Ruby teased Bruce, “can we go see it?”

“Ha, ha, very funny.”

Pulling up to a cluster of rustic buildings, the largest on boasting a large sign with ‘The Sportsman’ in script, Leroy announced, “well, this is it, Folks. Let me introduce you to Jenny.”

Jenny was surprisingly young and couldn’t keep her eyes off Bruce’s chest about to burst out of the tight T-shirt. She put on a look of exaggerated alarm when Leroy told her they had wrecked their car and asked if he was hurt or needed anything, not bothering to include Ruby in her concern. She guided him behind the counter for him to use the store phone and hovered nearby. When he returned, he pulled Ruby aside.

“Fury has someone on the way to get us. He said to find some place safe to stay until dark.”

“Good, it’s just after 3:00 now, so we have a while to kill. Let’s see if we can find a place to stay and get some food.”

“As long as it’s not at Cannibal Cabins,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.

“There’s always the Cannibal Grill.”

“You’re not helping,” he grinned in a moment of levity.

“You need to do that more often,” she told him.

“What?”

“Smile. It looks good on you.”

He flushed, “um, thanks?”

“Just don’t smile around Jenny. She looks like she’s ready to throw her undies at you,” she smiled at her risqué joke.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Good old Leroy hooked them up with a cabin at the Matterhorn Hotel. His cousin owned the place and agreed to let them stay with the promise they would pay when their ride arrived. He was also going to check the lost and found closet for some clothes that would fit Bruce better and he gave them $40 so they could grab something to eat. Ruby gave him a big hug and a kiss on the cheek before he left, making the man blush profusely.

Unlocking the door to their cabin, Bruce waved her in ahead of him, “after you, Mrs. Banner.”

Leroy had introduced them to his cousin as husband and wife and they just left it at that, so when the owner checked them in it was as Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Banner.

“Why, Mr. Banner, I think it is customary for the gentleman to carry his bride over the threshold of their first home,” she said in an exaggerated southern drawl and pretended to fan her face.

Bruce reached for her and she squealed and backed away, “I was just kidding.”

“Oh, I’m not. Far be it for me to refuse my wife anything she desires.” He waggled his eyebrows at her.

“Oh, no you don’t.”

Ruby tried to dash past him into the cabin, but he was faster and caught her before she could make it through the door. Hefting her up, he tossed her over his shoulder instead of carrying her in his arms.

“Hey! This isn’t the right way! Put me down, Bruce.” She slapped him on his butt and made her hand sting.

“Ouch! Why is your butt so hard?”

“I work out.”

He strode across the single room of the cabin and dropped her on the bed where she landed with an “Umph!”

“Rude much?” she asked indignantly.

He just grinned, “go ahead and use the bathroom first. I’ll wait for some different clothes.”

****

Forty minutes later, clean and feeling much more civilized, Ruby emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a large towel. She had washed her underwear and wanted them to dry some before getting dressed.

Bruce was sprawled out on the bed with the tight T-shirt in a pile on the floor, his eyes closed and soft snores coming from his slightly open mouth. Ruby had to admit he was a good-looking man. Not in a supermodel way like some of the other members of the avengers, but in an average Joe sort of way. Her gaze followed the thatch of hair on his chest as it tapered and ran in a line down his stomach to the deep V made by the unfastened shorts and ended in a thicker patch of hair just above a large swell in the shorts. Oh my, she thought and jerked her eyes back up to his face. And met his open eyes.

She flushed red from the top of her head to the tips of her toes that she was now staring at intently. What the hell? She had been around him naked for the better part of two days now. It was stupid to get embarrassed now, she thought.

“Um, sorry,” she stuttered. “I didn’t expect you to be sleeping.”

“I was more tired than I thought,” he said as he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed away from her. “I just shut my eyes for a minute.”

“Well, I’m done with the shower,” she said crisply. “If you give it a few minutes, I’m sure the water will be hot enough for you to get a shower.”

“Thanks.” He stood up and stretched, the shorts riding dangerously low on his hips. If she didn’t know better, she would swear he was trying to flash her.

“Oh, Roger brought a few things that might fit you too,” he indicated a plastic grocery bag on the desk by the door.

“Oh, that’s great!” she gasped as she rushed over to the bag.

As she went through the selection, Bruce excused himself to go take his shower.

****

As Bruce left the room, he was careful to keep his back towards Ruby. There was no way he was going to let her see he had a hard-on. The short time he was asleep, his dreams had been filled with the blond hair, pink lips, and lush breasts belonging to his   
erstwhile companion. Then he had opened them to see her standing there in just a towel staring at him with open desire. Well, there was only so much a man could take.

Running around her half naked in the forest, fleeing for their lives, was a far cry from the calm safety of the cabin they were going to share until help arrived. Thank God, they weren’t going to be forced to stay the night together in it.

Stepping into a tepid shower helped, though, and soon he had enough control over himself, that he felt he could rejoin her without making a fool of himself. The clothes that Roger brought fit much better, the jeans just a little big, which was a good thing, and the shirt worn, but comfortable and not hideously ugly. Rubbing his hair dry with a towel, he stepped back into the main room. And stopped.

Ruby, dressed now in a sundress almost the same color as her eyes, was sitting against the headboard with her knees pulled up to her chest and the skirt of the dress pulled down around them, leafing through a magazine she must have found. The neckline of the dress was a little low and the creamy tops of her breasts were almost spilling out of it as she leaned over her knees.

Looking up from the magazine when he entered, she dropped the magazine and scrambled off the bed.

“Oh, good, you’re done,” she smiled. “I’m starving.”

Standing, the dress was more modest, but her cleavage was still distracting. “You look nice.”

She grinned and spun in a circle like a child, “isn’t it pretty?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“It feels good to be cleaned and properly dressed, doesn’t it?”

Now that was something he could agree with. He nodded, then asked, “Do you know where we’re going?”

“Yep,” she spun and grabbed a pamphlet off the bed. “Here’s a map and we’re going to the Chillin’ Internet Café. Shall we, Mr. Banner?”

“Let’s Mrs. Banner,” he knew he had a stupid grin on his face, but her enthusiasm was contagious.

Pausing, she narrowed her eyes and tapped a delicate finger on her lips. “I have a thought. Give me a moment, okay?”

“Yeah, sure. Take your time. You’re the one that’s starving, remember?”

She bent over the desk and dug through the bag. Again, her cleavage drew his eyes.

“Um, I’m just be waiting for you out on the porch,” he said quickly.

“I’ll be right out.”

Out on the porch in the late afternoon air, he leaned against he rails and took a deep breath of the clean mountain air. There was a gentle breeze blowing, dissipating the heat from the day.

“Get a hold of yourself, Bruce.”

He heard the door open and close behind him.

“Ready,” Ruby asked stepping up beside him. She had a large purse draped over her shoulder with something bulky in it.

“What do you have?” he nodded to the purse.

She just gave him a sly smile, patted the purse and said, “insurance.”

Ok.

****

The Café was only a five-minute walk from the cabin. When they got there were quite a few other diners enjoying its offerings outside on the patio. Inside, Bruce ordered a pulled pork sandwich and Ruby got a chicken salad wrap. After a quick debate, they also ordered a beer for him and a frozen margarita for her.

Taking their drinks to the patio, they sat back to enjoy the last bit of daylight before night fell.

“At least we’ll be sleeping in a real bed tonight,” Ruby said after taking a drink.

“You forget, Fury will be here before long, so we aren’t staying the night here,” he reminded her.

“You’re right, I forgot,” she smiled slightly. “Too bad, this is a lovely place.

He nodded, “It’s not bad.”

While they ate their meal, they talked about anything but the circumstances that brought them to this place. Bruce told her amusing tidbits about the Avengers, she told him about wanting to grow up to be astronaut. The time passed pleasantly and quickly. The gentle breeze from earlier was picking up and the trees around the town were swaying back and forth. Too soon it was time to return to the cabin and wait for Fury. Before they left the café, Bruce borrowed a computer to send a message to Fury, letting him know where they were staying.

Back at the cabin, they lapsed back into an awkward silence, unsure how to pass the time while they waited.

“You’re tired, so lay down and take a short nap,” he told her.

“You’re tired too,” she argued back as always. “This is a big bed and we are fully clothed adults. I think we can both lay down and catch a nap without a scandal, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

She lay down on the left side of the bed, turned her back to him and curled up on her side like a kitten. Bruce lay down on the right side, taking care not to disturb her too much.

Unlike earlier, he couldn’t get comfortable and found it impossible to keep his eyes closed for more than a few seconds at a time. After a few minutes, he gave up and rolled over onto his back. He tried not to look over at Ruby beside him, but he was all too aware of her lying there.

****

When Bruce rolled over, Ruby held her breath until she was sure he was done. Her mind would not stop its train of thought about him and how he had looked at her in this dress. She had almost changed out of the dress when she saw how much of her chest it exposed and had fully intended to do so when she sent him out ahead of her. But then she had caught his covert glance as she looked for something else in the bag and had changed her mind. Then she had to make up a reason for staying behind, but she’d had a brilliant idea that made up for it.

Now, lying beside him, he was all she could think about. She tried to tell herself that it was just the stress of their situation catching up with her and it would go away when they got back to Houston, but that didn’t help at all. It didn’t help that she was uncomfortable on her side like this and the air was getting chilly quickly now that the sun was down.

Slowly, she rolled completely over to face him. He was laying on his back staring at the ceiling.

“Can’t sleep either?” she asked.

“Funny how I couldn’t keep my eyes open earlier and now I can’t keep them closed.”

She shivered a bit before she nodded.

“Cold?”

“A little.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” he huffed. “Come here.”

He reached over and wrapped an arm around her waist and drug her across the bed until she was pressed against his side. Sliding his arm under her head, he draped it over her shoulder and arm. He was warm.

“Thanks.” She snuggled closer, rested her head on his shoulder and threw her arm across his chest. That was much better.

“Better?” His voice was deeper as it vibrated through his body to her ear resting against him.

“Lots.”

She was able to relax now, but she still couldn’t go to sleep. After a while, she lifted her head to look up at him. He was still staring at the ceiling.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I guess, I’m still wired from everything going on.”

“That’s understandable,” she agreed.

“I just keep going around and round in my head and can’t shut it off,” he sighed.

Ruby wasn’t sure what came over her. Maybe it was all the trauma over the last two days, like Bruce pointed out, combined with feeling safe for the first time in as long. Maybe it was just the look on his face as he stared at the ceiling. Maybe it was the way her body was responding to being pressed up against him in nothing but the thin sundress. Regardless of the reason, she just went with the urge. Crawling up onto him until she straddled his hips, she leaned forward to press a kiss against his lips.

****

If he was being honest, he would have told Ruby that it was the feeling of her warm, soft body pressed against him that was making it difficult to close his eyes and rest. It was hard to ignore. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea after all. Ruby was everything he wasn’t: impulsive, bubbly and generous. Her enthusiasm and joy for life was as contagious as it was delightful. He found himself wishing their rescue team would take their time so he could enjoy her company a little longer. All too soon, this would end, and they would go their separate ways. The thought made him a little sad.

Wrapped up in his thought, he nearly jumped out of his skin when Ruby crawled on top of him. Instinctively, he grabbed her waist as she leaned down to kiss him. Her lips were soft and warm against his and she smelled like the fruity margarita she had with dinner. Bruce let go with one of his hands and cupped it to the back of her head to hold her against him, then kissed her back.

When she parted her lips for him, she tasted like she smelled, sweet with just a hint of alcohol. She surprised him again by meeting his tongue with just as much passion as him; matching him stroke for stroke, lick for lick, and even a little nip on his bottom lip. Suddenly, her slight weight pressing down on him wasn’t enough. Without breaking their kiss, he rolled them over so that he was pressed against her. Her moan was approval enough as he rocked his hips against hers.

When he pulled back for a breath, she was panting and flushed beneath him, her lips swollen and her eyes heavy with desire.

“You are so beautiful,” he whispered before dropping his head for another kiss.

A loud boom shook the cabin and the two sprang apart like they had been doused with cold water.

“What was that?” Ruby asked, eyes wide now, all passion forgotten.

The sound of gunfire and screams came from nearby.

“Hydra,” he frowned. “We’ve got to go.”


	12. Chapter 12

Ruby jumped off the bed, snatched up the over-sized bag and hurried towards the door. Bruce grabbed her arm as she reached for it.

“No, not that way.”

She huffed, but realized he was right. If Hydra was out there, they would be expecting them to rush out the front door. She turned away and walked to the window at the back of the room, pulling him with her. Releasing him, she bent down and pulled it open.

“Better?” she asked looking over her shoulder at him.

“Perfect,” he answered, but he wasn't looking at the window. His eyes were focused on her butt with the dress pulled tight across it as she bent over.

“Hey!” she snapped. “We don't have time for that.”

Bruce shook his head and looked sheepish, “right. Let's get out of here.”

He insisted on going through the window first, then helped her down from it. Immediately behind the cabin, the treeline started and stretched up the side of the valley. Gun fire sounded to their right and back towards the main road.

Bruce turned left, away from the sound.

“Bruce, wait.”

“What?”

“According to the map I had, the helicopter port is this way,” she pointed to the right.

“In case you can't tell by the gun fire, that's also where the bad guys are,” he said with sarcasm.

She wanted to punch him for using that tone with her.

“I'm not stupid, Bruce.”

“Good. Let's go.” Again he started to the left.

“Wait.”

“What?” he asked impatiently.

“Two things, Mr. Smarty-Pants.” She held up a finger, “one, the gun fire is back on the main road, that's almost three blocks away.”

“But getting closer the longer we stay here arguing.”

“Two,” ignoring him, she held up a second finger, “where do you think SHIELD is going to land their helicopter?”

She raised her chin, daring him to argue that point.

He opened his mouth to argue, but snapped it shut and nodded. “You're right.”

“Can you say that again?”

This time he ignored her, grabbing her by the arm and plunging into brush and weeds at the tree line. A few yards into the cover of the trees, they turned right and started picking their way carefully in the dark.

“How far is it?” he asked her softly.

She held up her thumb and forefinger about three inches apart, “this far.”

He stopped and looked down at her. She couldn't make out his expression in the gloom, but assumed he wasn't amused.

“About a half a mile,” she corrected.

As he continued to push through the brush, she heard him mutter, “God help me.”

Her dress, while perfect for their dinner out, was not suitable for the undergrowth they found themselves dealing with. Ruby found herself wishing they were back up on the mountainside, where the poor, rocky soil made it difficult for anything other than trees to grow. Within minutes, she was sure she was leaving a bloody trail from all the scratches and scrapes on her legs and arms. She was beginning to regret insisting they come this direction.

After an indeterminate amount of time, she caught a glimpse of light ahead and to their right.

“Bruce.”

“I see it,” he answered.

Together they crept closer to the edge of the trees, until they could see what lay beyond. She had been right, there was the helicopter. Excited, Ruby started forward out of the bramble, but once again Bruce stopped her.

“Do you have a death wish?” he hissed.

“No, but if you yank on my arm one more time, you're going to have one,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Look, Ruby,” he pointed at the helicopter.

With an impatient huff, she squinted through the darkness. “I don't see...,” she trailed off.

There were dark figures skulking around the helicopter. Ruby counted four.

“Six,” Bruce corrected.

Dejected, she backed away from the edge of the trees, careful not to move to quickly or make any noise. Bruce wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close.

“Don't worry. SHIELD will be here soon and then we'll have backup,” he whispered in her ear.

“I hope so.”

She leaned back into his warmth and he wrapped both arms around her, pulling her against him. Together they waited and watched the helicopter port. Ruby was so tired it would have been easy to drift off, but Bruce was absently running his thumb over her ribs just below her breast and making her body tingle in a delightfully distracting way. From the bulge pressing into her bottom through the thin material of the dress, she guessed he wasn't unaffected either.

She wiggled slightly and was rewarded with a quick intake of breath near her ear. Bruce tightened his hold on her.

“Ruby...,” he warned in a low rumbling voice that she felt more than heard.

She grinned at his response and was going to reply when she felt his stiffen.

“Shit,” he whispered.

“What?” Instantly alert for danger, she looked for what had triggered his alarm. Her heart thudded loudly in her chest when she saw two of the figures walking towards the trees.

“Did they see us?”

“Shhh.”

“Should we run?”

“Hush,” he ordered. “Stay still.”

Ruby knew he was right. If they moved now, they would be seen, but with the two men walking straight at them, it was hard to fight her urge to run.

The men were just yards from the trees when they froze and looked back towards the helicopter. One put his hand to his ear and signaled his companion with the other. Together, they turned and ran back to join the others.

“What...,” Ruby began then she heard the distinct sound of an aircraft approaching.

“They're here,” Bruce whispered unnecessarily.

She had to shield her eyes when the area was flooded with light from the hovering Quinn jet. She heard the sharp retorts of the people on the ground firing then the lower sound of the weapons on the jet returning fire. Within seconds, the people on the ground were either down or scattered and the area was clear. 

As the jet touched down, Bruce pushed her forward, “let's go.”

Together, they pushed their way through the brush and broke free of the tree line. Both broke into a run as the back ramp of the jet lowered to reveal SHIELD troops inside. More gunfire came from their right, making her falter, but Bruce was right there by her side urging her on. What had previously seemed like a short distance now seemed to stretch out farther than she had expected but she ran on, her breathing in rhythm with her strides.

They had covered maybe half the distance when Bruce grunted and stumbled. Blood bloomed on his thigh from the bullet that found its mark. She stopped and tried to help him and was greeted by glowing green eyes and a snarl.

“Go!”

Without a word, she turned away from him, tears in her eyes and blindly ran on. Shots peppered the ground around her but, strangely, none hit her. Reaching the asphalt pad, two of the soldiers ran out to meet her, one to help her to the safety of the jet and the other to cover her as she sprinted the last few yards. Arms reached out to catch her and pull her into the safety of the jet, then pushed her deeper into the interior before she collapsed, panting, on a bench.

“We got her! Go. Go. Go!” someone shouted.

“Wait!” she called out. “We can't leave him!”

“Don't worry, Ma'am,” one of the soldiers assured her, “we aren't going to.”

True to his word, the jet lifted off and followed the Hulk as he rampaged through the Hydra soldiers while adding gunfire from the air. As much as she wanted and needed rest, Ruby found herself wide awake and anxiously watching out the window just behind the pilots, only catching an occasional view of him in action. She flinched every time one of the soldiers fired at him from point blank range even though she knew he was impervious to the projectiles. But still, surely he felt the impact at least?

However, the close range shots only enraged him even more and he roared at the enemy as he flung them effortlessly away, smashing their weapons like twigs in the process. In short order, the hydra troops were either laying on the ground, or in trees in some cases, unconscious or had retreated in defeat. A second jet had joined the one Ruby was on and, before the dust had settled, landed and dispersed ground troops to conduct the final clean up and round up all the Hydra soldiers left behind by their comrades.

The jet she was on touched down also, but only to drop off additional troops and to collect Bruce after he changed back. He stumbled onto the jet on shaky legs, still somewhat disoriented after his transformation. One of the remaining soldiers draped a blanket over him since he was once again naked. 

Flopping down on a bench next to her, he gave her a lopsided grin, “are we having fun yet?”

Without answering, Ruby reached down and hefted the over-sized bag she had been lugging around and plopped it unceremoniously into his lap.

“What's this?” he frowned.

“Clothes,” she told him simply.

He opened the bag and peered at its contents then chuckled.

“Trust you to be practical.”

“What did you think I had in there?”

He shook his head still smiling, “to be honest, I don't really know. I guess I just thought it was stuff like shampoo, soap, toilet paper.” He shrugged.

“Yeah, I thought about that when we passed that WalMart up on the mountain while we were running for our lives.” She tried to scowl at him, but her lips twitched in the beginning of a smile.

“What? You mean you didn't notice that Avon lady trying to sell perfume to a bear?”

She covered her mouth to stifle a giggle.

“Are there even Avon ladies around anymore?” he mused.

Maybe it was a combination of their exhaustion or the surreal events over the last few days but neither of them could contain their giggles after that. They laughed even harder at the confused looks from the soldiers around them, leaning against each other for support and comfort.

****

In the early hours of the morning, just before sunrise, the jet set down at a remote airfield outside of Houston. A large, black SUV was waiting for them. As they climbed in, an angry voice greeted them.

“You can't even go to the bathroom by yourself without getting into trouble?”

Ruby started with a small yelp as Nick Fury leaned forward out of the shadowed corner he had been lurking in.

“Thank you, we appreciate your concern, Fury,” Bruce answered irritably. “Oh, and by the way, I found the Hydra cell in Houston. You're welcome.”

“Fuck my concern!” Fury snapped back. “And we were there to find the cell, not get your ass kidnapped by them along with the daughter of one of the wealthiest men in the state.”

Bruce felt his anger rising and the Big Guy stirring inside him. It must have shown because Ruby's cool hand was suddenly on his.

“Easy, Bruce. I don't have another set of clothes stashed for you,” she murmured.

And just like that, the anger died and he was just tired again.

“We did get some good intel on them, though,” he offered to ease the tension in the SUV.

For the next ten minutes, while the vehicle wound its way through the nearly empty streets of the city, he and Ruby filled Fury in on the computer files she had found on the server at the institute, the emotion suppression collar, what she had overheard for the short time she was Hydra's prisoner, and their suspicions about her father. What had at first seemed like a lot, now that they laid it out it seemed more circumstantial than factual. Except for the collar. He had immediate, painful personal knowledge about its capabilities.

Sitting back to contemplate the information, Fury harrumphed. “That seems pretty thin,” he gave voice to Bruce's own thoughts. “Beaumont is the one that brought the Hydra activities in Houston to our attention in the first place. He's the one that made the initial connections that we've been looking into. Why would he do that if he is working for Hydra?”

Bruce shrugged, “I'm just telling you what we think.”

Fury turned his gaze to Ruby and she visibly shrank back in the seat, “do you believe your father is working with Hydra?”

“If he isn't working for them willingly, then he has to be doing it against his will,” she allowed. “They could be using me a leverage,” she suggested. “That might be why they were so intent upon kidnapping me along with Bruce. Why else would they want me? Apart from my father, I'm nobody. I have no value.”

Bruce's heart ached with the pain in that admission. He wanted to tell her that she did have value. That she was brilliant and funny, and just as strong mentally as any of the women he had worked with in the Avengers. But now was not the time. Not with Fury watching them like a hawk.

They rode for a few minutes in silence with Ruby leaning comfortably against him. He was pulled out of his own thoughts by a soft snore and looked down at her. She was asleep, her mouth slightly open and a spot of drool making a dark spot on his borrowed shirt. Carefully, he eased his arm out from between them and then pulled her down so that her head rested on his thigh. She smacked her lips and mumbled something unintelligible, but never opened her eyes.

Across from them, Fury snorted and shook his head. When it looked like he was going to say something to break the silence in the car, Bruce just brought a finger to his lips and shook his head. Let sleeping girls lie, Fury. Let them lie.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it had taken me so long to update this story! I was fixated on another WIP and having some family issues. But I'm back at it, so yay! Hope you enjoy this.

Was it possible to be stuck in both Heaven and Hell at the same time? Ruby asked herself this as she soaked in the garden tub of the safehouse she was now confined to. Bruce and Fury had turned her over to a couple of generic agents at the safehouse in the wee hours of the morning and promptly disappeared. Which was fine by her; she wasn’t in any condition to answer any questions and had immediately collapsed face down in the bed and went to sleep.

When she woke up much later in the morning, the pair still had not made an appearance, but her guards had changed. At least she thought they changed but it was hard to tell them apart in their bland black suits and regulation haircuts. However, she seemed to recall that both were men when she arrived and one of them was a woman now. Maybe she had missed the woman, but she was hardly worthy of three agents guarding her.

“Hey,” the female agent rapped on the bathroom door, “are you okay in there?”

“Yeah, I’m about to get out,” Ruby replied as she reluctantly sat up in the still warm water and reached for the drain plug. This was the third time the agent had checked on her. Heaven forbid she get to relax for fifteen minutes without interruption.

With a towel wrapped firmly around her, she left the bathroom and crossed the bedroom to the door, which at the insistence of the agents had to remain open while she was in the bathroom with the door shut. Letting them know she was out, she shut the door, giving herself more privacy.

She supposed she should have been grateful for the protection SHIELD was providing, and the safehouse was better than she had expected. Somehow, she had never pictured a safehouse as a nice home in a residential area. She had always envisioned a seedy hotel or a hovel in the middle of nowhere. That just went to show how clueless she really was when it came to this kind of thing.

The agents watching over her had been courteous and she could find nothing to complain about with the entire setup. Still she was irritated and on edge. Not just from the stress of having to hide from Hydra. Or being cooped up in the safehouse. Of course not, she thought, frustrated with herself. After spending several days exclusively in Bruce’s company, suddenly being abandoned at this house by him was grating on her. And as the day wore on and there was no word from either him or Fury, her irritation had grown to the point that she found herself taking it out on the undeserving agents assigned to her.

After she had snapped at the male agent when he asked her what she wanted for dinner, she had retreated to the master bedroom and then to the bath. She had wanted to take matters into her own hands, so to speak, to get rid of some of the tension, but when the female agent had informed her that the bedroom door had to stay open, she had been too embarrassed to do anything. Now, she was even more frustrated.

Dressed in the jeans and tee shirt SHIELD had provided, she took a bracing breath and stepped out into the main room to find out what they had ordered for dinner, only to stop abruptly at the sight of a different agent in conversation with her two guards. Dressed in a nicely tailored suit in a shade of blue that brought out the color of her eyes, Ruby knew this newcomer was not just another generic agent.

“Ah, Ruby,” the new woman smiled and came across the room to greet her. “I’m Agent Thompson and I will be debriefing you.”

Ruby shook the proffered hand. “Hi.” Maybe now she would get some answers.

Dinner had arrived, so Ruby helped herself to a plate and sat at the dinning table with Agent Thompson across from her.

“I had time to read through your statement,” Thompson said, opening a folder and shuffling through several sheets.

Ruby could make out her handwriting on the pages. After she woke up, she had spent two hours writing down everything that had happened from the moment Bruce had walked through the door of her office.

“You were very thorough,” she continued. “But I have a few questions.”

Of course, she did.

“What projects were you involved in at the institute?”

“None,” Ruby answered simply.

“None?” Thompson raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow. “I find it hard to believe that a mathematician of your caliber would not be involved in several, if not all, of the projects at the institute that your father funds.”

“First,” Ruby put down her fork and glared at the agent, “my father isn’t the sole patron of the institute…,”

“But he does contribute nearly seventy percent.”

Ruby gape, “seventy percent? I had no idea it was that high.”

“And it is named after your mother.”

“My father did pay for its construction,” she admitted. “But that’s not the point…,”

“That is the point, unfortunately,” Thompson interrupted her again. “Why would the daughter of the person that built the institute and pays almost all its expenses not be involved in any of its projects?”

Ruby’s face burned as the agent pinned her with cool blue eyes.

“Because none of them think I’m any good,” she wished the ground would open and swallow her. “They think my father bought my degree.”

“Did he?”

“No!”

“Why would they think that?”

“Because I dropped out of MIT and, when I finally went back to school to complete it, it was at a smaller, local university here in Houston.”

“Why did you drop out?”

“My mother got sick,” she said in a small voice.

Agent Thompson paused in her questioning before continuing.

“If you weren’t working on any of its projects, what was your role at the institute?”

“I didn’t have one,” Ruby admitted, refusing to look Thompson in the eyes, not wanting to see same disdain she had faced every day there. “They gave me a small office out of the way and left me alone.”

“How did you get Stark’s formula?”

“I was bored and looking for something interesting. A while back I found the Abandoned Projects file on the server and it had some interesting stuff. That’s where I found it.”

“Do you remember any of the other files?”

Ruby nodded and Thompson slid a pad of paper and a pen across to her.

“Can you make me a list of what you remember?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Ruby quickly wrote what she remembered then passed the pad back across the table.

Without looking at it, Thompson tucked it into the file and continued with her questioning.

“What do you know about your father’s business?”

“He runs a private equity firm. I know that means he invests in different businesses around the world, but I don’t know much more than that.”

“So, you’re not involved in any of his business dealings?”

“He wants me to be, but I don’t understand how any of it works, so I’ve been avoiding it.”

“But it’s math.”

“No,” Ruby shook her head, “it’s statistics. Everyone makes the mistake of thinking they are the same thing, but they aren’t. They have completely different goals. In mathematics, the goal is to have both sides of the equation balanced. They have to be equal. Statistics goal changes depending on the purpose of the equation.” She shuddered, remembering the two classes in statistics she had been forced to take. “It doesn’t feel right.”

Thompson just looked at her following that statement, as if trying to figure out what planet she was from. Ruby felt like a specimen under a microscope, as if the agent could see all the minutia of her pitiful little life.

After that, Thompson only had a few more questions for her, all clarifying her statement. Before she left, she warned that she might have more questions.”

“Well, I’ll be here,” Ruby responded with forced brightness, eager for the agent to leave. That gained her another odd look from the woman.

****

The next day brought another unwelcome visitor to the safehouse as Nick Fury strode through the door after breakfast with the impact of a tornado.

“Alright, everyone, let’s get this place packed up. We’re wheels up in two hours.”

The two agents watching over her that morning, Cox and Hardin – Ruby had made an effort to learn their names and be more friendly towards them – scrambled to do as he directed. Relief flooded her, she could finally get out of this comfortable prison and go home. She turned to go pack her few belonging, but Fury stopped her before she could make her escape.

“Leave it, they’ll pack it up for you. You’re with me.”

Ruby turned to him, uncomprehending, “what do you mean?”

“I mean, you are leaving now. With me.” He held the door open for her to proceed him through it, “let’s go. There’s a stop we need to make on the way to the airport.”

Ruby held her ground, letting the agents go around her as they gathered up. “I’m not going to the airport with you.”

Fury frowned, “I need you to come with me to the institute. Banner’s already there and he wants your input on a couple things.”

“Ok, I guess,” she couldn’t really refuse them any help. And she had personal items she needed to collect from her office. “But I’m not going with you to the airport.”

“Young lady,” Fury glowered at her with his good eye, “I don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation. Hydra is building a spaceship in order to beat us in this new space race and you are smack dab in the middle of it. You are going with me to the airport and then to New York willingly, or I will have these agents tie your ass up, stuff you in a crate, and you will still go but a hell of a lot more uncomfortably. Get it?”

What little courage Ruby had mustered fled at his threat and she meekly walked through the door and got into the black SUV waiting outside.

****

At the institute, Fury steered her in the opposite direction from her office towards the main workspaces that the others had used. Inside one of the larger rooms, Bruce stood, directing agents taking pictures and loading files into boxes. When Fury and Ruby entered, he looked up and smiled widely.

“So, the threat worked?” he asked Fury.

“Yeah,” the director nodded and pushed Ruby further into the room. “You forget how convincing I can be. It’s a shame, I was looking forward to Cox and Hardin having to tie her up.”

Bruce pulled his wallet out and handed a bill over to Fury.

“What?” she sputtered. “You had a BET?”

“Don’t look at me,” Fury held up his hands, “Banner is the one that thought I would have to hog tie you to get you to go to New York.”

She crossed her arms and glared at the two men, “you still haven’t gotten me there yet.”

“I like her,” Fury laughed. “Now, show her so we can get out of here. I’ve got a call to make.”

With that he left the room. 

To break the awkward silence that followed, Ruby muttered, “I don’t want to go to New York.” She didn’t do well with new places and new people.

“Hey,” Bruce came over to stand by her, “I’ll make you a deal. Come take a look at what I found. If, after that, you still don’t want to go, I will try to talk Fury out of making you.”

She raised her eyes to meet his and saw only honest concern in them.

Nodding, she agreed, “fine. I’ll look, but I don’t think anything will make me change my mind.”

Leading her over to a white board that took up an entire wall, he pointed at it. “Tell me what you see.”

Ruby frowned. The board was covered with sketches, notes, and formulas. Starting on the left, she worked her way across. Two-thirds of the way, she stopped in her tracks.

“What the heck?”

Coming to stand by her side, Bruce pointed at the formula that had caught her attention. “That’s the same formula from the files you were working on.”

Ruby couldn’t believe her eyes, he was right. It wasn’t just the formula; it was her work on the formula. It was just sitting there, waiting for her to figure out what was wrong and complete it. And it was tied back into another formula on the board. Not the academic formula she was trying to solve back in her office, though.

“What is this?” she asked Bruce.

“That is the equation for figuring out the final bit needed for this propulsion system.” Bruce turned her by the shoulders to point her at another board, this one free-standing. On it was a mechanical drawing of some kind of engine, but that wasn’t what caught her eye. On yet another board, set back behind it, another equation was partially visible.

Ignoring Bruce, she went to the board with the drawing and pushed it out of the way. Her heart pounded in her ears as it was revealed.

“This is mine also,” she whispered.

“What? Are you sure?”

She nodded, “I know my work. This was from over a month ago.”

“Why were you working on it?”

“I was bored and found it in the same files as the other.”

“Ruby,” Bruce took hold of her shoulders again and turned her around to look her in the eyes, “are there any others that you got from those files that you solved?”

She nodded mutely.

“Look around,” he instructed. “Are any of them in here?”

Turning in a full circle, she looked closely at the rest of the work on the white boards that lined the walls of the room.

“That one,” she pointed. “And that one.”

At that point, her legs failed her, and she sat down hard on the floor. Pulling her knees up and hugging them, she buried her face in them. All this time, she had thought the others were just ignoring her, which was bad. Instead, they had been using her to help them build a spaceship. This was far, far worse.

****

Bruce was torn. On one hand, he wanted to pick Ruby off the floor and comfort her. She had no way of knowing Hydra was using her work to their own ends. He could only imagine how violated she must feel. On the other hand, he needed to let Fury know that Hydra had used her to crack some of the most complex problems facing those that wanted to win the space race. SHIELD’s scientists were woefully behind, thanks to Ruby.

Fortunately, they now had Ruby, if they could convince her to help. That thought helped him make up his mind. After all, the damage was already done. Ruby had to be their primary concern now. And his.

Going over to where she huddled on the floor, he sat down beside her and pulled her into his arms. She didn’t resist and curled up against his chest, burying her face in his shirt, sobbing. Hugging her to him with one arm, he stroked her back in what he hoped was a soothing motion and murmured into her ear, “it’s okay. It’s okay.”

That’s where Fury found them when he burst back into the room.

“Banner, what the hell is taking so long?”

Sitting on the floor, the two were hidden from his view from the door.

“We’re here,” he called out to the director and waved his free arm in the air.

“What the hell is going on?” Fury sounded pissed as he came into the room and spied them on the floor.

“We found something alarming,” Bruce said over Ruby’s head.

She pushed away from him, “it’s okay. I’ll be okay.”

As Ruby got shakily to her feet, Bruce stood and faced a perplexed Fury.

“I was right,” he started. “They were monitoring Ruby’s work and probably feeding her equations that they needed her to solve by hiding them in the Abandoned Projects file. Besides that one,” he pointed to the equation he and Tony had created, “there are at least three others in this room.”

“And she solved them all?”

“All the ones in here, yes.”

“Did they get everything in here documented?”

Bruce nodded.

“Then grab her and let’s get our asses to New York and start un-fucking this mess.”

“Hold up,” Bruce stopped him and turned to Ruby. “Do you still want to stay here?”

“Banner, what are you doing?” Fury demanded.

“I promised Ruby that I would talk to you about her staying.”

“That is out of the question.”

“She’s not one of your SHIELD agents or an Avenger for you to boss around like you own her!”

“No, but she’s neck-deep in some serious shit and I can invoke my authority and make her go whether she wants to or not.”

Bruce felt that familiar anger rising to the surface at his callous disregard of Ruby as a person, but a cool hand on his arm stalled the rise.

“It’s okay, Bruce. After seeing how I was used, I don’t see a choice. I need to go so I can fix this.”

He looked down at her upturned face, her eyes red from crying.

“Are you sure?” His voice came out almost as a growl.

She nodded and gave him a weak smile, “I’m sure. It’s time for me to quit hiding from everything and do something that matters.”

“I knew I liked this girl,” Fury said with a smile.


	14. Chapter 14

Ruby insisted they stop by her office before they left for the airport. Stepping carefully over the debris still littering the corridor outside, she stepped through the hole where the door used to be. She stopped just inside, shocked by the destruction to the small space that she had called her own for two years. The desk was still standing, with only one leg broken, though it had been shoved against the wall so forcefully that one corner had broken through the dry wall. Had she been under it when that occurred? She couldn’t remember; she had been so terrified and focused on the fight between the Hulk and the Hydra soldiers.

The white board had fallen off the wall and was laying on the top of the desk. Her computer, what was left of it, was on the floor a few feet away. Ruby swatted by it and lifted the broken case.

“We already recovered the hard drive,” Bruce told her from the doorway.

Dropping the case, she stood and wiped her hands on her pants legs. “Good. I have a lot of hard work on it that I don’t want to lose.”

“When we get to New York, we’ll get you set back up.”

She nodded absently, looking around at the mess trying to avoid the dark red stain on the floor where the soldier had fallen. She only had a few personal items here, but they had sentimental value to her, and she didn’t want to leave them behind. Bending down, she fished one from under the desk. It was a square coffee mug designed to look like the TARDIS from Doctor Who. Izzy had given it to her when she first came to work at the institute. Sadly, the handle had been broken by its fall.  
Setting the broken mug on the corner of the desk, she lifted the white board enough to peer under it. Her trophy from the first mathematics competition she had ever entered, and consequently won, while in the 9th grade was laying on its side, undamaged. It joined the broken mug.

Ruby walked around the desk searching for the most important item: a framed photo of her and her mother taken the summer before she had become ill. She found it in a corner. The glass and frame hadn’t fared well in the fight, but the picture wasn’t damaged at all. She breathed a sigh of relief and pulled it free of the broken frame.

“Ruby, we need to go.”

“Okay, I got everything I need.”

Gathering the mug and trophy, she surveyed the room again. She had spent two years of her life in here and should have been at least sad about its destruction, but, strangely, what she felt was more like relief. She realized she had been slowly suffocating here. At least one good thing had come out of being kidnapped by Hydra. Well, maybe two good things, she thought, stealing a glance at Bruce and immediately blushing.

“Oh my god! Ruby!”

Startled, Ruby watched as her friend Izzy shoved her way past Bruce and launched herself across the room, enveloping Ruby in a tight hug.

“I was so worried about you when they told me you had been kidnapped,” Izzy told her, not releasing her. “You must have been so scared.”

“Ouch, Izzy. You’re squeezing too hard, let me breathe,” Ruby complained, the trophy and mug digging painfully into her diaphragm.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” her friend stepped away and looked intently at her face. “Are you okay? Did your father pay the ransom? Why didn’t you call me the second you got back? I’ve been frantic!”

Fury and Bruce had told her that Hydra hadn’t been mentioned in any news releases. Her abduction was being broadcast as a kidnapping.

“I’m okay. They didn’t hurt me. They just scared me a bit,” she told Izzy. “Bruce, I mean Doctor Banner, and SHIELD gave the locals a hand since they were in the area.”

“Bruce, huh?” Izzy said in a theatrical whisper and winked.

“Shut up!” Ruby hissed. “Don’t embarrass me.”

“How long have you been back? And don’t you dare tell me days! I will kill you for not calling me and letting me know you’re okay immediately.”

“Well,” Izzy frowned, “I’ve been back for a couple of days, but they had me staying in a safehouse, just in case, and wouldn’t let me make any calls.”

“Not even to your BFF?”

“Not even you,” Ruby shook her head.

Her friend pouted, “that sucks. But what are you doing here?”

“Well, it seems that I might still be in danger. They haven’t caught the guys that kidnapped me and since I saw their faces…,” she let the sentence trail off.

“Oh, God, Ruby! That’s awful!”

“So, they are transferring me to a SHIELD safehouse. I can’t tell you where, so don’t even ask. But I wanted to collect some of my stuff from here before they whisk me away.”  
Izzy looked down dubiously at the items Ruby was holding.

“You came back here for that? You are such a weirdo.”

“I know, but I can’t help it and you love me anyway.”

“Absolutely!” Izzy grinned. “That’s why I’m going with you.”

“Really?”

“I can’t leave you alone for a minute without you getting into trouble, so I’m not going to take my eyes off you again,” she crossed her arms and nodded decisively. 

“Oh, Fury’s going to love this,” Bruce moaned from the doorway.

****

He was right. Fury pitched a foul-mouthed fit at Ruby’s announcement that Izzy would be accompanying her. She refused to go if her friend wasn’t included and, short of throwing her over his shoulder and carrying her onboard, she made it clear he had no choice in the matter if he wanted her assistance. In the end, he angrily agreed and stomped away saying the pair were now Bruce’s problem.

Once the jet was in the air, Ruby debated telling Izzy the truth. After all, it was going to be hard to keep her in the dark once they reached the Avengers training compound instead of a safehouse. Excusing herself for a moment, she made her way forward to where Fury was, well, furiously fuming.

Sitting across from him, she took a breath and jumped right in, “are you really that mad?”

One eye glared at her, “what do you think?”

She nodded, “I get it. I do. But will you try to look at it from my point of view? I’ve been kidnapped by Hydra, drugged, and chained up. I had the Hulk tear up a jet around me. I’ve been chased through the mountains, shot at, almost blown up by a missile. I’ve had to sleep in a hole in the ground with a naked man. Me, the pampered daughter of a businessman, whose idea of ‘roughing it’ is staying at a hotel without room service. Can you even begin to imagine how terrified I have been?”

When Fury just continued to glower at her, she went on, “despite all of that, I’m still willing to help you and try to undo the damage that’s been done. Can’t you cut me a break and let me have someone by my side that only cares about me and my wellbeing?”

Fury stared at her for a few uncomfortable moments before rolling his eye and sighing, “you want me to jeopardize our operation so you can have a security blanket?”

Ruby refused to back down. Where this new bravado came from, she wasn’t entirely sure, but she was going to make the most of it before it fled.

“Haven’t you ever had a friend that makes you feel like you can take on the world when they’re around? Or have you just shot everyone that gets close to you between the eyes before they found out you have no heart?”

He blinked then burst out laughing. Of all the reactions, this was not one she expected. She sat in stunned silence until his mirth died down.

“Go back to your friend, Ms. Beaumont, before I decide to throw both of you off this jet without parachutes.”

Unsure what to make of his remark, Ruby hesitated.

“Do you really want to test me?” he asked.

“No, but, um,” she stumbled on her question, “what exactly can I tell her about what’s going on? I mean, she isn’t going to buy the story I gave her if I’m at SHIELD helping you.”

“No, she isn’t,” he sighed again. “As of now, she is cut off from the rest of the world. We are going to get the local law officials to tell her family that she is in hiding with you for emotional support, so they don’t panic. Tell her what you want.”

Before he could change his mind, she scrambled out of the seat and went back to where Izzy was drinking a cocktail.

****

Bruce watched the two women through half-open eyes. He worried when Ruby went forward to talk to Fury and when he heard his boss laughing every hair on his body stood on end. It was never a good thing when that man laughed. 

Left by herself, Izzy waved over a flight attendant and ordered something to drink. While she waited for either the drink or Ruby’s return, she dug through her purse for a moment the shoved it aside with disgust. Fury had forced her to give up her cell phone before she boarded the jet and she had not been happy about it.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about Izzy’s presence. He had been looking forward to working with Ruby to finish the final pieces needed for the spaceship before Hydra. Now, she would have her friend with her, and their time alone together might become nonexistent. But having Izzy around seemed to make her happy, so who was he to begrudge her that?

When Ruby walked by to rejoin her friend, he couldn’t help but admire the way her jeans hugged her hips and butt. His fingers twitched as he remembered it had felt in his hands. That made him think about how her lips felt and how good she tasted. He squirmed uncomfortably in his seat as another part of him responded to that memory.

Before she sat down, she glanced back at him and gave him a tentative smile. He smiled back and nodded. Then Izzy grabbed her wrist and wrested her attention away.

This was going to be a long flight.

****

Izzy had still not come to grips with Ruby’s revelations when they landed. She was still asking questions about what had happened, and it was becoming annoying. Ruby was grateful that she had left out Bruce’s nudity, their sleeping together that first night, and the kiss they shared at the cabin.

“So, they took your hard drive so you can continue what you were working on?” Izzy asked for what had to be the fourth time.

“Yes,” she sighed.

“Have they told you what you’ll be working on next?”

“Not yet. We still have to go over everything we found at the institute before we know where to even begin.”

“Huh,” Izzy grunted, “sounds like they’re keeping you in the dark as long as possible. I mean, if the goal is to beat Hydra into space. It’s not like knowing where they are in their efforts will change that. If they would just tell you, you could already be working on it and not wasting time.”

“I don’t know,” she considered Izzy’s argument. “They could just be playing it safe. The fewer people that know the better for security reasons.”

“So now they don’t trust you? After all you’ve been through because of them?”

“Well, it wasn’t because of them,” she found herself defending SHIELD. “My father is the reason I was kidnapped.”

“According the them,” Izzy pursed her lips. “I know your father isn’t the most warm and fuzzy guy, but Hydra? Come on, Ruby. Do you really belief he is capable of something like that?”

She didn’t know what to think. The agents that were guarding her at the safehouse had let her call her father and he had sounded genuinely worried about her.

Stepping off the jet, she was shocked to see that they were not at an airport. The jet had landing directly at the Avengers compound. On the news after the battle with the Titian, the compound had been reduced to rubble and the grounds surrounding it looked like a wasteland.

Now, while still bare, the grounds had been reshaped back to a semblance of normal. The open field was once again flat, trees had been replanted to replace those uprooted, and straw covered bare earth until grass began growing again. The main building, at least she assumed it was the main building since it had the Avenger symbol on it and a roundabout in front, was almost complete and looked like there was just cosmetic finishes in progress. Another building, the largest of any under construction, off to the left with another landing pad was almost complete also. Other buildings behind it, spread out around expansive grounds, were in various stages of construction, some still just skeletal frameworks.

Despite her apprehension, Ruby found herself excited by the prospect of working here. Everything would be state of the art and she would be working next to some of the greatest minds in the world. It wasn’t every day that a girl from Houston got such an opportunity. She just hoped she wasn’t completely out of her depth among them.

As if reading her mind, Izzy wrapped an arm around hers, “You’ve hit the big time, girl! I’m so excited for you. Now just don’t start sabotaging yourself by doubting your abilities. You’re every bit as smart as anyone here, you hear me.”

Trust Izzy to always say the right thing. “That’s why I brought you with me,” she smiled at her friend.

“Besides, it’s your birthday this weekend, remember?” Izzy added.

“Oh, crud! I completely forgot,” Ruby was shocked.

“I know. Another reason you need me!”

Arm in arm the two friends followed Fury and Bruce towards the building and whatever lay beyond.


End file.
